Amber Run: "Get on board now, or you'll just look stupid in a few years"

The “shortest member of Amber Run” (guitarist Will Jones to most people) ponders their new release.

Amber Run’s just-released new album ‘For A Moment, I Was Lost’ finds the now four-piece stripping back their previous output, honing their craft and coming back better than they've ever sounded before. The only way is up, says guitarist Will Jones.

Your new album ‘For A Moment, I Was Lost’ is out now - did you go through a period of feeling a bit lost? Are you okay? The title is in reference to the last couple of years, where we've all gone through various stages of anxiety and depression - the album is sort of a story around that. We're all fine now though - actually, we're better than ever.

What have you been up to since your debut, other than new album making? Well, aside from music, Henry's finishing off his degree, Tom's working in a motorbike shop, Joe's moved to Brighton, and I bought myself a dog. But regarding band activities... mostly new album making! We haven't played a show since December 2015, so we're all pretty desperate to get back to it. We've been pretty fucking bored.

Do you feel more prepared for the release of this one, what with it being your second ąn all? Yes definitely. The build up and release of '5AM' was painful at times - to be honest nobody really knew what they were doing first time round. We've been planning this album for a long time with a very specific concept in mind. We came so close to calling it a day last year, the fact that we are about to release a second album into the world is a blessing, and we're all pretty excited about it.

How did you find recording? Did everything come together easily? It did - we spent five days in Konk Studios in Crouch End and intended to get at least drums and bass finished, but we went home on the Friday with about 70% of the album recorded. The rest was done at my house. It was a much more direct approach - live tracking almost the entire record and not fussing for hours over getting the perfect take, or second guessing everything. A lot of it came down to the fact that we'd done a load of work on the songs in the demoing process, so we went in with a very clear vision of how the album was going to end up.

You've said this album's 'a timely response to more recent experiences' - what does it cover? We just went through a very stressful period towards the end of 2015. We were under a lot of pressure to write a song that the people around us felt was going to be 'a hit' - it's a classic story. Ultimately, it just ended up sounding shit, and we all felt really demoralised by the whole experience. We generated so much negativity just by being around each other which had terrible repercussions on all our mental states. That's basically where the album comes from.

Have you managed to achieve anything with the creation of this record that was beyond you previously? I think we are ten times more proud of this album than ‘5AM’. It's not that ‘5AM’ wasn't good or that we didn't like it - we recorded the album with our FOH engineer/MD/general mentor Ben, so it was entirely in our hands how we recorded it and it feels so much more personal to us. Unlike ‘5AM’, this album was written in a specific period about a specific period - there is a story there that we wanted to tell.

What’s your favourite track on the album? We all probably have different ones. There's a song called 'Island' that we wrote days before going into the studio that we're proud of. I also personally love 'White Lie' because, musically, it's something we've never really tried before - just having the same beat and guitar part through the whole song while everything changes around them. It's sort of hypnotising.

What would you most like fans or new listeners to take away from the release? We just want people to see us how we see ourselves - we want to be the biggest band in the world, and we see this album as the second chapter of a longer story. We've always said amongst ourselves that we'll be the band we want to be on album four. So - get on board now basically, or you'll just look stupid in a few years.

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