Amber Run has long since been one of my favorite artists, so to have the honor to discuss their upcoming album, How To Be Human, with frontman/guitarist Joe Keogh was exciting. Read below to discover their love for it, more about this new era, and how it came together.
The release of this album — February 24th — predates your 6 UK tour dates in April. Which tracks are you most excited to play on tour?
Of the new stuff, “The Beautiful Victorious,” “Hurt,” and “The Last Dance” for sure. Some of the new stuff has a lot of energy and we’re really excited to pass that on to the folks that come along to our shows.
From this album, is there a particular song that you each find yourself attached to more than the others?
I think for me, “How To Be Human” and “The Last Dance” are the songs at the moment that I find myself the most attached to, but that changes. Especially after playing songs night after night on tour, you get new relationships with them. So ask me again in a couple of months…
You tackled some dark moments of your lives in this album. How did you keep yourselves grounded when writing about heavier subjects?
Knowing that songs and records are just snapshots in time. They are a mirror for particular moments and that means that another moment will come next — hopefully one that feels exciting and fun.
The EPS The Search (Act 1), The Start (Act II) and The Hurt (Act III) combined make this album but which EP would you say you found the hardest to create?
I’d say The Search was the hardest to make because we were still fleshing out how we wanted to make the record and what exactly we wanted to say. We jumped into the deep end and started recording. It’s always interesting at the beginning of a project because you just have a blank page and you know you need to make something of it.
Was it always in the plan to combine the three EPs into a new album?
Yes. We wanted to record differently than we had before; to challenge ourselves and give ourselves the best opportunity to enjoy making music over a longer period.
How did you go about picking which songs would be released on these EPs vs added to the collection of the album?
We watched movies and read books and saw the moments that their narratives took and did our best to recreate that within the confines of a record. The ups and downs, the movements of subplots within the wider narrative.
My favorite song on the album is “Honeylight”. Could you tell me the inspiration behind that song?
The overall vision was trying to recreate that glow of the morning sun when it cuts through the blinds. How it catches the dust in the air. It’s a reflective time of the day where you start to make sense of the days or weeks before. We wanted to capture that feeling.
Are we going to be hearing different versions of the songs than the EPs gave us?
You know it. It’s fun to reinterpret songs that you feel like you know. Put them in different costumes and you get a different response to them. They start saying different things to you.
Your fanbase is ever-growing and changing. How do you feel about your past projects gaining popularity on social media, especially among younger generations?
It’s interesting. We love that new people are still finding and reacting to our music. It’s a privilege some of our older work is still speaking to new people. But that’s why it was made, that was the intention. We hope that people can find some value in it forever.
“Funeral” had to be a hard song for you to create. How do you support each other during difficult writing processes?
We listen to each other. Try not to judge each other. And do everything we can to help each other say what we meant to say the best that we can say it. It’s taken some practice.
How To Be Human is a nod to the fact that there is a wish for there to be a guidebook on humanity. If you could have a guidebook on anything else, what would it be?
How to get off all the marketing emails we receive about how we are supposed to live our lives. I don’t need another Black Friday email ever again. My kettle works, thanks.
How To Be Human releases 2/24 via TRIPEL. You can preorder/presave it here.
