Album Review: The Amazons - 'How Will I Know If Heaven Will Find Me'
Riotous Reading rockers The Amazons are back with their third studio album, the succinctly titled ‘How Will I Know If Heaven Will Find Me’: a lighter and more optimistic album which backs away from despair and manages to squeeze out the hope and joy left in the world.
The Amazons are an interesting band. Since forming back in 2014, the four piece have always managed to craft anthemic rock which somehow captures both the light and the dark of society: the menacing guitar line of Little Something, the piercing Black Magic, or the angsty, slightly grunge-y Mother, all contrasted with, say, the nostalgia-laden joy of Junk Food Forever. But fundamentally they’ve always been a rock band peering over the edge into the void — content to revel in the darkness, if not quite taking the plunge.
And then, at the start of this year, just prior to embarking on a UK tour supporting Royal Blood — including a night at the O2 — they released the first taste of their third album, in the guise of lead single ‘Bloodrush.’ From the first few seconds, you can tell that the band had found a new direction — happy, albeit not relentlessly so. It’s an ear worm, and a fantastic one at that; acoustic performances, drip fed on the band’s Instagram, show it to be even more so. And it was only the start of it, as ‘Ready For Something’ came soon after, a track already on the cusp of erupting, its riffs clawing at the edges of the song, desperate to escape the confines of the chorus into the almost unhinged instrumental breakdown in the final minute.
Album opener and sort-of title track ‘How Will I Know?’ came next, then, the tracks starting to fly out into the world in quick succession. One of the tracks that survived the culling of lockdown — more on that later — it was also the first track to be written for the album; the fact that the rest of the tracks seem to stem from its pop-laden rallying cry is as evident from the title as it is from just how easy it is to enjoy.
Finally, ‘There’s A Light’ dropped shortly before the album as a whole. A little more low-key than the other singles, it’s gentle presence seems to exist as a way to help ease you into the album. It’s a great soundscape to fade into, to let the understated instrumentals wash over you while Matt Thomson’s vocals being to surround you.
The four singles, as much as just prime examples of the Reading band’s talent, cherry-picked and plucked from the album, serve as an introduction. Rather than focussing on the dark with glimpses of the light, as with the debut or 2019’s Future Dust, the band have flipped it on its head; celebrating joy and life, especially while we have it in the light of the past few years.
There are moments of darkness and dread, sure — the foreboding ‘One By One’, for instance, welcomed in by Matt’s almost mournful crooning, at first somehow stands out both as one of the lightest songs musically and most oppressive songs, tonally and lyrically, that the band has put out; and, later, as the song explodes, mirroring the dreadful event that sparked its existence — the Beirut explosion, a catalyst for a moment of self-realisation on the band’s part, helplessly stuck inside with all the chaos and strife outside — it’s still a song full of malaise and a sort of seething anger, but now almost primal in its sonic rage.
Yet for once these moments are few and far between. Instead, the album is soothingly, almost reassuringly optimistic. ‘Northern Star’, a track written at first exclusively by Matt for his girlfriend’s birthday, to make up for his frustrations at the inadequacies of video calls in the face of half a year apart (and counting, at the time), bounces between romantic devotion and just gratitude that the other person even exists: ‘The axis of my Earth... it’s much more than I deserve’, Matt sings, as passionate as he sounds anxious.
Similarly, the forced pairing of near-piano-ballad ‘For The Night’, full of self-doubt and need for re-assurance — ‘show me how to live again/ if only for the night’ — and the more riotous ‘In The Morning’, the doubt washed away by morning light — ‘I’ll be there in the evening/ when you feel the doubt in your heart’ — creates a contrast which both expresses the fears and resolves them. ‘It’s okay to worry — I’ll be there’, they seem to say.
It’s a curious thing to try and tell which songs came where in the process. With countless songs written over lockdown, a way for Matt to bridge the gap with his girlfriend — as with ‘Northern Star’ — you can almost begin to track the trajectory of mindsets: hopeless and helpless (One By One) becomes resolve (Wait For Me) becomes joy at being reunited (Bloodrush).
But also, like many songwriters and artists over lockdown, many of the tracks were written simply as a way to explore and express everything going on over the two years. The hopelessness, the introspection, and at times the beauty. And that seems the crux of it.
Album closer ‘I’m Not Ready’ puts it best. ‘Life is cruel’, Matt cries in the chorus, ‘but not right now.’ There’s a lot of ugliness and evil in the world — there’s enough darkness without another album centred around it. So let’s make the most of the little things: the time we spend with the ones we love, the words that mean a lot to us. Even good drink — drummer Joe Emmett added wine qualifications to the CV over lockdown.
And, obviously, some brilliant new music from The Amazons. A little thing that’s bound to become big soon enough.
Words by James O’Sullivan
