Initially comprised of founding members Joe Keogh, Tom Sperring and Will Jones, along with Felix Archer, and Henry Wyatt, the Nottingham, UK-based indie rock band Amber Run can trace its origins to when its founding trio of Keogh, Sperring and Jones, who had been friends since attending Dr. Challoner’s Grammar School in Buckinghamshire started an alt rock band together. Keogh, Sperring and Jones met Archer and Wyatt while they were all studying Humanities and Law at the University of Nottingham. Keogh had started a solo recording project that started to receive some attention; but as the as the story goes, the members of the then-quintet started to jam together one day and recognized that they had an undeniable simpatico — and the members of the band decided to quit school in their sophomore year, to fully focus on music.
Within their first few shows, they captured the attention of BBC’s Dean Jackson, who featured the band on the BBC Introducing Stage at 2013’s Reading Festival, which eventually resulted in the band signing to RCA Records, who released the band’s first three EPs, Noah, Spark and Pilot and their full-length debut, 5am; however, by the following year, the members of the band had been dropped by their label. Instead of giving up in frustration, the members of the band had come to the same conclusion: the songs they had been working on were worth pursuing and that they needed to write and record an album, despite not having a label and being in the midst of severe of financial troubles. And naturally, that meant the band taking matters into their own hands. But by February 2016, the band found themselves at one of their lowest points as a band — they were in a creative rut, Archer had left the band and the band was close to closing up shop.
Produced by Ben Allen, who has worked with Bombay Bicycle Club, Deerhunter, Washed Out and CeeLo Green, Amber Run’s follow-up For A Moment, I Was Lost is slated for release on Friday through renowned indie label Dine Alone Records and the album is influenced by the band’s own torment, fear, anger, betrayal and learning how to progress past ill-feelings to personal and artistic growth — while trying to write and record the best and most authentic material possible. And as you’ll hear on the album’s second and latest single “Perfect,” the band’s sound manages to be their most brooding — and while nodding at The Stills, Foals, Brit Pop and New Wave, the newly-consittued British quartet pairs that brooding air with a soaring, anthemic hook. What the song reveals is that they can pair real life emotions with a cathartic, adrenaline rush of arena rock.
