Review: The Amazons - The Amazons
THE AMAZONS
THE AMAZONS
Reading four-piece The Amazons have dreams to headline their hometown festival and with a few more loud albums like this, it’s hard to see why not.
★★★★
Nowadays it seems like their is a million wannabe indie rock bands saturating the market, unfortunately that is actually the reality, you really have to be or make something special to stand out amongst the guitar lead crowd if you want to succeed, for the most part The Amazons do just that.
The Amazons at first are hard to pin down, this really works in their favour, they seemingly take the best bits of current indie rock bands and somehow find a unique middle ground of their own, one moment they are Blossoms with a little bit of bite, the next when the drums burst in their Royal Blood, if you even slightly like indie rock music then theres a track in here for you. The whole of the album was recorded live which truly adds to their unpolished, gritty feel, you know that the live show will be brilliant purely down to the quality of music your hearing from your speakers.
The self titled album opens with ‘Stay With Me’ a loud and brash song that grabs you almost immediately, it’s the perfect statement of intent from the band, the tracks infectious guitar riffs will be stuck in your head for hours. ‘Burn My Eyes’ is as raucous and rampant as you’d imagine, it’s a fantastic start to the album and already has them pinned as this years standouts.
Festivals that have booked The Amazons for this summer are clearly ahead of the curve, the band are bound to provide some of this year’s best live moments, I can’t wait to see fields of people singing along to tracks such as the instantly addictive ‘In My Mind’, a song which quickly becomes the albums highlight, a track which Royal Blood would be proud of. For most though the Radio 1 single ‘Junk Food Forever’ is going to be the live standout, with it’s catchy choruses and singalong made verses.
‘Raindrops’ is a unique blend of ballad and storming rock song, it never feels like it belongs in either of those categories, it’s an enigma, half of it feels like it’s pleading for you to stay whilst the instruments are angrily pushing you away, this leads into the wild and familiar ‘Black Magic’, original fans will appreciate it’s inclusion and it still remains as fresh as ever.
The album isn’t perfect, I found ‘Ultraviolet’ and ‘Little Something’ did little to capture me unfortunately and takes the up to then high tempo album down a few notches as the band throw everything but the kitchen sink at the tracks hoping for something to stick but the result ends up more forgettable than ferocious.
‘Heavy Roller’ thankfully remedies this with a more acoustic take on the rock track, the guitar and vocals reminiscent of Foals, it’s a great mix-up and proves the band are capable of changing it up sometimes, this is none the more apparent on the closer ‘Palace’, instead of a loud crazy finish the band decide to do a complete U Turn, ending with a piano led ballad of all things, it’s a beautiful finale and shows that Matt Thomson can be a vulnerable soul not just a wild child.