Live Review: The Amazons - Somerset House, London 16/07/2024
“Sick” guitars and sunsets at Somerset House.
Somerset House and it wasn’t raining. The song playing at 19:59 for the support act soundcheck was Voodoo In My Blood by Massive Attack & Young Fathers, which is the perfect hype song for bands like these.
I’d never heard supporting Brighton band Yonaka before, but I’d been told they were “quite lively” and “you’ll like them, they’re like Black Honey and Band of Skulls”. The comparison is strong, singer Theresa Jarvis has a great voice that reminds me of Gwen Stefani - the same reason I love Izzy Baxter Phillips in Black Honey. There’s a slight issue with song 2 because Yonaka runs to track. Theresa’s explanation that “those cool electronic sounds you hear are recorded and if that fucks up, we’re fucked” is succinct. They were “fucked” after 3 attempts but the crowd were behind them, encouraging support and begging for acoustic versions, whatever necessary to get a song going. Fans knew songs they wanted (“play Guilty!”) and this is all signs of a great performance and a solid band - I’ve seen bands at festivals taken down by electronic failures and once, poor Chrvches were booed off stage. Yonaka rose to the challenge engaging the crowd, waving their hands in the air whilst there was another great song sang by Theresa. They even managed to get a mosh pit going. If you face a glitch in your performance, musicians, that was the model of how to do it. I’m a fan and if you like old school Kings of Leon and Gwen Stefani, go and listen to ‘Dreamer’. They’re a heavier band than all the ones I have mentioned, one for the rock fans. There are a lot of Doc Martens at this Gig.
I came for the guitars and obviously that’s what I got, opening the show. It was a varied crowd in age and styles but that always tells that fans have come for the music rather than the scene. The band formed 10 years ago so we’re all a bit older than we realise.’Ready For Something’ opened the show, the fan’s 4th most popular song on Spotify at nearly 3,000,000 streams. I like the lighting on this, it’s a festival strip around the drums stage in particular that bring the Somerset House staging to somewhere at the midpoint of Nashville outdoor show and British Festival headliners.
‘Bloodrush’ from their 2022 album ‘How Will I Know If Heaven Will Find Me?’ is next.
I liked looking around the crowd at this one, there was a lot of finger pointing and clapping, and mouthing/singing the words whilst smiling. You could use these visuals in some advert somewhere because the music really is bringing people together. I often muse at the oddity that is hundreds of strangers standing together to watch sounds being made, but music, like sports, unites people. Probably why later on, singer Matt Homson mentions the Euros.
Majority of the crowd were singing the chorus along to ‘Stay With Me’ next and were really going for it, some even at in the car/shower level of belting. I prefer The Amazons live to their records actually because I feel a much stronger pull to sing along to the songs here than on the recorded tracks, and that’s probably how it should be. Photographer and I speculated it’s the great work of the show producer and we both discussed singer Matt Homson’s excellent voice. We weren’t sure who would be drumming for The Amazons after Joe Emmett left in 2022, but George Le Page has been on “drum duty” this tour (quote from George’s instagram). “George Le Page, king of Guernsey” was Tom’s introduction to the audience. That’s cool, I couldn’t name many famous people from there.
Matt introduces the musicians after several songs, and then cracks into an accoustic ‘One by One’ with just guitars and beautiful vocals. It’s a nice change from the tracks we’ve heard so far because it’s always good to see these in a live performance, to have a reminder how good musicians are at being musicians and not just being performers. Guitars are swapped and started constantly throughout this show. I got the guitars I wanted,
Happy birthday to Christopher on bass - the crowd and Matt sang together. Singing happy birthday is that awkward thing that nobody wants to participate in nor receive but it’s obviously fine when Matt Homson is carrying the song. Chris has “been in the band 10 years and never done this before” but Matt has made him come to speak to the people of London. Chris came to tell us - with ease for someone who’s never spoken to the crowd - that we were really loud and that was special because he grew up around the corner from here, and their next song will be ‘Georgia’. I misheard our Photographer say this song was “a bit sick” due to the riff at the end. Turns out she said “pretty sick” but I’m going to use “a bit sick” to describe an understated great thing from now on. ‘Georgia’ was long, at least on stage and reminded us both of ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles.
I will take another opportunity to say how great Somerset house is as a venue. I’ve praised them before, no squelchy mud underfoot and you are never more than 30 seconds from a beer or a toilet cubicle with toilet paper, relatively low queues apart from 8:35pm for the jerk chicken food truck. The lighting for ‘doubt it’ matched with the lighting of Somerset house in a warm orange, giving us Summer night despite the crappy weather we’ve had in London this past week. ‘Doubt it’ strayed from the structure of the recorded track but we like that, like it’s a treat for the fans who came out for the live show.
This show marked a noticeable lack of encore theatrics with no pretence of the show being over or applause, just the band all leaving the stage for 60 seconds or less. There were a lot of showcases of Matt’s vocal ability in later songs and it sends the show off well, as did finishing with the fan favourites. ‘Black magic’ is the song that led me to the band, with its strong guitar opening.
“This has been the best fucking gig ever” Matt said as he announced a new single is coming in September. This gig was “a bit sick” really.
Words by Jemma Sharpe
Photography by Abigail Shii
