MASCULINITY, CHAPPELL ROAN AND GETTING OFF YOUR ARSE: SPEAKING TO THE AMAZONS MATT THOMSON

Fresh off their collaboration with Royal Blood on the track ‘My Blood’ and in anticipation of their new record 21st Century Fiction, The Amazons‘ Matt Thomson has had his hands full. Speaking to Northern Exposure on the year and new music to come, Matt said “It’s very exciting coming into this year; we’re trembling.”

“There’s definitely anticipation about how the work is gonna be received, especially when you can’t do anything about it. It’s already done, but we’re mostly excited really, because we’re very proud of the work.

It didn’t feel like we were harking back to a previous Amazon – it felt fresh and new for us, but it felt familiar as well.”

The first single off the new record, ‘Love is a Dog from Hell’, is a clear Amazons track, with an unsuspecting country twang. Thomson revealed this to be more of a detour rather than an entire scope of the album to come, an album they’re “trying to push in a direction that’s interesting”.

“We’ve made a record with deviations because fuck me, ‘Love is a Dog from Hell’ just doesn’t mean anything, it’s like such a red herring, but we love it so much.

The rest of the album is much tonally cohesive, and instead of being a full stop and answer, for me, it’s like the beginning of a conversation.

We can go deeper, we can make more, we can refine and  we can have a better idea of what 21st Century Fiction is a year from when it’s made.”

The album is a new lease of life for the band, not that they needed a new start of anything, but just a fresh perspective on how they perform, write and incorporate their lives into their work. Matt said tunes off the record like ‘Pitch Black’, ‘Joe Bought a Gun’ and ‘Go All the Way’ were songs he needed to write;

“I think the album for us correlated on my own personal timeline with a  reckoning: I took hitting 30 years old terribly because I felt the whole thing was flavored by unfilled promise.

That kind of led to a lot of reflection, about my personal life, my relationships, and just how I looked at myself; it’s been a kind of revelation, since we’ve written the since we’ve recorded the album about how much I listened to it.

Speaking on the themes entangled in the new record, Matt said: “I felt there were certain more traditional ideals of masculinity that served as a bit of a cage for me in my twenties and prohibited me to be my true self – I was always chasing an ideal of masculinity that asked me to be much more inauthentic.”

“The kind of ideal of masculinity that was much more macho, aggressive with certain world views attached to that – and the funny thing is I never even got there in any way.”

Masculinity has been a huge societal conversation lately with Netflix’s Adolescence and Sam Fender’s recent comments on two brothers, whose name I won’t repeat, and the band are seeing the repercussions of a toxic culture daily.

“This is the album I developed a voice, and a worldview that hopefully you can kind of see across multiple tracks.

Men are in desperate need of any fucking influence that isn’t some macho aggressive asshole grifter piece of shit who wants to engage ultimately for financial nefarious influence, motives.

It would only be something that we would even entertain unless that was part of the makeup of our fan base and aligned with personal experience.

That would be the only way it would make sense because the Amazons have historically never been a particularly political band; I’ve always shied away from that sort of thing.”

Thomson feels it’s almost an expectation now for an artist to make their political standpoint clear, thinking back to different times a few years back at a festival, when they were warned that a Jeremy Corbyn t-shirt might be too much. 

“It was a very traditional view, little did we know that that would become a completely archaic view.

I’ve always hated empty posturing and I really think if you believe in something you better back it up, because there’s nothing worse than people just jumping on buying wagons because it’s hot right now. 

I have my political views, the boys and I are pretty much aligned on everything but then we’d all have to be really, really passionate about something to put the Amazon’s name on it because it represents all three of us.”

Aside from the lyrical themes, the band have found a new ‘sonic language’ to communicate important messages, Matt always more engrossed with their sound then their lyrics.

“I felt that we’ve just stumbled across some kind of musical paths in the form of ideas and songs that just had an aggression and had a darkness that felt really in keeping with how I was feeling and it was liberating in that I had a vehicle that I could really express this side of myself.

There’s a vision for this record and everything that comes after to encapsulate this feeling of the world is burning, but I can’t seem to get off my ass – I can barely fucking brush my teeth without a podcast on, I’m so fucking reliant on my little dopamine.

Everyone’s trying to save the world whilst navigating an addiction to their phones.”

Aside from the ‘whirlwind of themes’ that have kept the band busy, there’s been some R&R with a recent mashup of Chappell Roans ‘My Kink is Karma’ and Radioheads ‘Creep’ – iconically named ‘My Kink is Creep’.

Matts idea, the cover came from a place of love for both artists and just messing around with some chords, saying: “We were just coming up with covers, and we wanted to do something unexpected – I think it’s more of an interesting thing rather than us ripping into a Nirvana cover.

I won’t rest until Chappell does Radiohead when Radiohead comes back because they’re coming back and doing a tour, and they need to do a mashup.”

A longtime midwest princess fan, he continued: “I’m gonna do that thing where you’re like, I was there kinda early on. 

I listened to ‘Casual’ about two years ago, and I loved it. Isn’t that vindicating? It’s like, shit, maybe I have good taste.

Love Chappell, love her worldview, she is a rockstar; she has a real punk rock spirit.”

However, the punk rock spirit of Chappell and other current performers on main stages have set a highbar for the band, The Amazons wanting to approach gigs ‘a little bit differently’ when they return.

“I think the bar is so high, with live performance now, if you look at anyone’s it’s almost like you’re debuting a new album when you debut a live show.

There’s gotta be a correlation between the transfer of income and you can see the creativity of high level artists going into live shows, whether it’s Sabrina Carpenter, Dua Lipa, 1975. 

Thomson has actually been writing a play around the themes of the album, but hesitates in calling it a concept record, saying: “The kind of lyrical protagonist is an alter ego of mine called River.

He’s a young man in his mid to late twenties who’s returned to his childhood home, and is kind of rotting there, consumed by demons and his unfulfilled whilst his family life is also kind of decaying around him: a lot of broken dreams, sleepwalking until it’s  too late.”

These themes coagulate in the intelligently intriguing record that promises to be 21st Century Fiction, releasing May 9th. Additionally, and more importantly to some loyal fans, the forever awaited track ‘Night After Night’ graces streaming on April 7th. It’s going to be a big year for the boys, playing Live at Leeds and supporting Queens of the Stone Age in Italy (an actual dream gig). 

“We would love to just use 21st Century Fiction as a platform to explore different types of performance or art, because I think we’re much closer to my idea of what it means to be a good band than we’ve ever done.”

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