New music to listen to this week: The Amazons

Now Hear This

(Press image (Press image)

The Amazons are a lively bunch from Reading who are gaining traction thanks to their rowdy live gigs.

Far from your current trend of rock band wannabes (*cough*Catfish*cough*) who seem to behave how they think rock bands are supposed to, they sound like a friendly bunch.

Frontman Matt Thomson apparently puts on gigs in his hometown to meet other bands he likes - including my favourites InHeaven and Sundara Karma.

We're premiering their hefty new track 'In My Mind' - check it out and let us know what you think.

Q&A with Matt Thompson of The Amazons

What are you listening to at the moment?

We've been enjoying a lot of output from our peers recently. We've caught a lot of sets over festival season and naturally want to carry on listening in the van afterwards. OTHERKIN are a band from Ireland we've had on repeat after playing with them a couple of times. They play really direct, really catchy Hives-like punk songs. In terms of more established artists, Miike Snow's album is a delight. It's clever, interesting pop with a welcomed maturity. I think Genghis Khan is one of the best songs of 2016.

What are your plans for the rest of 2016?

We've just released our latest single 'In My Mind' into the world, so the video for that is imminent. Touring is the name of the game for the rest of the year, most importantly our headline UK tour in the first two weeks of October. We played a similar run of shows at the same time last year so it'll be great to see how much a difference a year makes.

What was the first gig you ever played, and what’s been the best so far?

The first show we played with this lineup was in a famous little place in Reading called The Rising Sun Arts Centre. It's basically the front room of a listed building which becomes a bit of a sauna when it's populated by any more than 20 people . I think it was good to get our worst show ever out the way first. Second song in I'm strumming the guitar frantically and break 2 or 3 strings on the spot.

Without a spare I gingerly carried on without the guitar and managed to forget the words of a couple songs. There aren't many times I want the ground to swallow me up but that was one of them. Our best show I think was a headline set in Reading at the Oakford Social Club. It was the night before my birthday so I guess it was a bit of a party. From the first note we played, the line between band and audience was quite blurred. Our good friend Oscar from Sundara Karma joined us on stage for our song 'Junk Food Forever' which went down great too.

The Amazons play Oslo in London on 13 October