I sat down with Matt the other day to dissect these details regarding the new record and see where his creative process began with its creation.
Sarah Tunstall: Hi Matt how are you doing?
Matt Thomson: Hi, I’m good, great, enjoying the sun today.
ST: So, your new album, set to release this year (9 May), is titled 21st Century Fiction. I want to know, if you’re on a desert island, what three books are you taking with you?
MT: Well, I’ve just finished East of Eden [by John Steinbeck]. Wow, yes, that was a lot, so I’d like the space and time to go through that again on a second read. The Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransom, for obvious reasons. Ask The Dust by John Fante, that was really informative for this record. Oh, also, The Art of Acting by Stella Adler, that’s also been really informative. I’m not an actor, I think I’d actually be a really bad actor, but I find it super interesting to delve into other creative processes; whether it’s actors, directors, writers I think they are a bit more explicit with how they communicate the process to the outside world.
ST: You have said that 'Living a Lie' was a "turning point" for the band. Did it feel like, because of this, it naturally aligned with being the opening song of the album?
MT: It set the tone for us, very much so. It was the sonic palette, or really blueprint, and the creative ethos of the record, setting the tone of how we wanted to approach the songs. We wanted to include the audience in that as well. We wanted to make a very grand and cinematic record, so it felt appropriate for us to start with this song. With a minute of orchestration and no vocals, we wanted the record to be the antithesis of catering to this short attention span that seems to be favoured by artists currently. We wanted to get over what listeners would do to our music. We’re going to make music that we want to do and not care what a listener might do when they hear it.
ST: I’m always interested how albums are constructed. Did you go into this record with an idea of themes and motifs for the song progression across the tracks? And the sort of process you needed to achieve this?
MT: We wanted to be a lot more purposeful with how we sequenced the songs on this record. I think the format of an album has been really tested over the last two decades with the explosion of streaming, digitalisation of songs which put more pressure on the single song and playlist. I think some of the best albums have come from acts like Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar. They lean into the strengths of what an album is, an immersive world-building exercise. I think with the Amazons, the idea of world-building within the format of an album just suits us. It’s ultimately an exercise in storytelling so I feel like this is our natural habitat.
We were really interested in interludes and intermissions to maximise the impact of the succeeding song. The reason why we hadn’t approached that with previous albums is because it is a craft and of course, you get better with practice. We have an industry that judges an act by their first record, I think there should be an acknowledgment of the progression of artists.
ST: The language of books and fiction have this ability to explicitly wave to issues in the world. Do you think the title of the record, 21st Century Fiction, lends itself to acknowledging and putting pressure on the current issues we see in the world? Such as the climate crisis, AI use and current government?
MT: The best works, in any format, that last and stay relevant in the passage of time serve as platforms that continue to open a conversation. The idea of this album was I did not want to prescribe the answer to what '21st Century Fiction' means. When I discovered the title, it created more of a “fuck what does this mean”. I judge the strength of an idea by how many other ideas and concepts sprout from it. I found with this title the many dimensions I discovered over the year of making the album, discovering more as we go through and release more music, I have a better idea of what it means. I know that I will have a different relationship in ten years time as well. AI and current government are really interesting to me with the idea that this record might currently speak to listeners like that. Obviously, I have a more personal view and experience that shapes the record: with navigating the last ten years of adulthood and the struggles with playing a role. There’s also a lot of anxiety with the thought, the worldview, that essentially, we are a quarter of the way through the 21st century. What we’re navigating every single day fits within this discourse of being in the pocket between reality and fiction that the title lends itself to.
ST: You have this new tour and album to release in May. When you go through these processes with each release, do you have those moments where you look on your progression as a band and as an artist?
MT: I think that’s something we’re really tuned into. I live it every day whether we are progressing or not. I often study old performances of the Amazons and only a few times have I come to what I would call a perfect show. But I think that pursuit is a blessing because you get the opportunity to pursue it but then it’s also a curse because it can feel like you’ll never get there. I think we are getting closer to the vision to what the Amazons could be, and this album pushes us a step closer. There has always been a disparity between my vision and what we are able to pull out the hat. Whether it’s the fault of inexperience, inability, budget, or plain bad luck. But this disparity pushes us. I’d be worried if people thought they were amazing when they start out. There must be this disparity because it’s what drives us to get better and better. I view the Amazons in this timeline of progress.
ST: I’m always interested in the creative process of creating and setting up this imagery through posters, music videos etc. alongside music. Was there anything you went into this album saying, "I want this image to be alongside this record"?
MT: That’s the process we have definitely gotten better at. Immersing ourselves in the world of the album and acting as if the music is a script and we are the directors interpreting it—or trying to create a world that the album inhabits. It would have been a massive disservice to not to this for the record and as an artist; to put everything into the work and not have this visual identity and theme that ran alongside it, it didn’t feel right. That’s where the reading about actors and directors has come into it and approaching this all like a film. For the visuals you definitely have to do the work and put the research in and develop your taste and creative palette or you can’t make good creative decisions. There would be no weight to your decisions. It’s the artists duty to develop their tastes as they progress with their decisions to make anything of quality.
ST: Finally, what music artists or scores inspire you daily or particularly informs this record?
MT: Well, [Bob] Dylan is always one. I have had Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde on a cycle recently. I have also listened to 'Desolation Row' [from Highway 61 Revisited] about 15 times in the last two days. We’re pretty obsessed with the apocalypse and the end of the world at the moment and I think a lot of music in the late 60s and early 70s they had this creative license to talk about these subjects. That’s a time, I think culturally, that have similar parallels to now. The creative output seemed to be good at addressing these situations, maybe because music was more of a cultural driving force. You know putting on records and wanting to know what artists thought about. There’s a passive view to music, I think, in 2025. There’s almost this separation of politics and music. The music that we have been listening to is a lot of: Sly & The Family Stone, Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed in particular. The Temptations, in the late 60s they did a lot of cool counterculture records. Staple Singers. But then of course our influences are Nirvana In Utero. We’re not listening to it currently but we are influenced by them. But those 60s, 70s artists are what we were listening to when we created this record. We wanted to create this scene of a hot, sticky, summer and these really fed into that.
The Amazons' fourth album, 21st Century Fiction, is released on 9 May. The band's headline UK tour starts in October, with a show at Newcastle's NX on 24 October.