The Amazons interview: 'We want to play in Scotland more'

The group are touring new album How Will I Know if Heaving Will Find Me?, a top five hit, and will bring their expansive indie sound to SWG3 in Glasgow on Sunday.

It's the only Scottish date on their tour, something Thomson is all too aware of.

He told The Herald: "I would say it’s actually a massive source of frustration for The Amazons that we don’t play in Scotland more.

“I get that Glasgow is an incredible city but also why can’t we play in Aberdeen, Dundee, Inverness, Edinburgh? Why can’t we explore the country?

“I don’t understand that and it’s something we want to do in the future.

“When we first started we went on a little tour and we played in Edinburgh, we did Dunfermline, and we’ve played in Dundee a couple of times as well.

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“The question always remains the same with our team: why aren’t we playing Scotland? Why don’t we come out here and explore the country and play in front of the great Scottish crowds? Why do we always just have to do one show in Glasgow every time? It’s bulls***.

“I hate that. We’re not even playing a single date in Wales, it’s a joke. I just think there’s so much more to Scotland than just playing in Glasgow once every couple of years.

“We want to spend way more time giving the country the respect it deserves.”

The new album sees The Amazons expand their arena-ready sound even further, working with Jim Abiss who produced the Arctic Monkeys debut album and the first two Kasabian records.

The result is a huge-sounding collection of songs which the group cannot wait to play live.

Thomson explains: "Jim was one of our heroes. A lot of the records that he’s worked on were record that made us want to be in a band in the first place.

“So it was really special to work with Jim. We’ve always been drawn to more wall of sound type things and we’ve always been drawn to cinematic sounds when it comes to making our music so I think it was a good fit for us.

“We just leaned into making things as expansive as we wanted to.

"This album, really, was made with this tour in mind. It was the thing that really got us through lockdown as a band and gave us a sense of purpose.

“It was this idea of light at the end of the tunnel: when we get through this we can get back onto the road and play these songs.

“I can say I was looking forward to it but I would be doing it an injustice to say that, it’s so much more than that.”

The Amazons (Image: Chuff Media)

The songs themselves were informed by lockdown, with a collection of songs which would have made up the third Amazons album scrapped in favour of ones inspired by Thomson's long-distance relationship.

He says: "We started on the record during the first lockdown but it just wasn’t working. We weren’t revisiting the demos and that’s always a good indicator of whether you like what you’re making: you want to listen to them all the time and that wasn’t really happening with this.

“We had a couple of breakthrough songs like ‘How I Know’ that kind of gave us direction sonically and lyrically.

“It was excitement and also nervousness because the lyrics were a lot more personal about the long-distance relationship I’ve been in.

“We’ve been in a band together for a while and my personal life wasn’t top of the conversation with the boys in the band, we’re all mates talking about music and stuff.

“But they responded so well and really saw themselves in the songs and related to them and were excited by them.”

How Will I Know if Heaven Will Find Me? was released on September 9, going in at number 5 in the album chart, but promoting it proved something of an issue.

Just a day before the release of the record the death of Queen Elizabeth was announced, with the country entering two weeks of national mourning.

Thomson says ruefully: "It was a humbling experience because our timing was impeccable. It was a really tough time to put an album out, at the same time as the Queen dying so it was a big challenge in terms of being able to promote it.

“Toeing the line in terms of tone, messaging and promoting the record and stuff. But our fans and the community around the band really rallied around us and there was something in the music that really spoke to them.

“So we pulled through and had our highest chart position which is not something that we think about very much but it was a very special week for us as a band to take stock of how far we’ve come.”