In the Randomised Record series, I take us both on an adventure to (re)discover my record collection. Fate decides: whether it be that obscure grunge album I bought recently or that emo rap record from 2017. Nothing is safe from the hands of the randomiser! I will listen to the entire album and highlight my favourite song off of it here on the blog. Do I still enjoy my records as much as when I bought ‘em? Let’s find out. Today, episode 8: ‘The Amazons’ (2017) by The Amazons.

Tucked away in the top left corner of my record collection we find ‘The Amazons’, the debut album by a British rock band carrying that same name, released on the 26th of May 2017. An album full of indie rock, garage rock at times, housing two songs that can be considered small hits for the Reading lot: ‘In My Mind’ and ‘Black Magic’. It’s been a hot minute since I played this record, one that I received as a birthday present from my partner as part of an eclectic collection consisting of Thick’s ‘5 Years Behind’, Royal Blood’s ’Typhoons’, While She Sleeps’s ‘Sleeps Society’, and the drum & bass edition of Enter Shikari’s ‘The Mindsweep’. That’s the perks of living together with someone who’s as crazy about music as you are, I guess.

Much to my own surprise, it’s been almost 10 years since I discovered The Amazons. For that discovery, we have to dive deep into my own blogging history, back when I had only just set up my previous blog De Spotlight. January 2016. It had been a few months since my website – pretty much the instigator of Jam of Today – had seen the light of day. My main goal during that period of my life was to share as many of my favourite songs with the outside world as humanly possible. Therefore, next to being an active blogger, I also still hosted my own radio show in my hometown of Hoorn, The Netherlands. Basically, I was taking on every single opportunity to share the songs that I loved. Looking back at that now, I suppose not much has changed after all. Either way, I highlighted The Amazons in a weekly segment called ‘Discover Weekly’, a name which I had definitely 100% not shamelessly copied off of Spotify’s auto-generated personalised playlist full of ‘new and undiscovered’ music. Absolutely not.

This specific segment on De Spotlight contained 3 songs I was into at that time of day, ‘Ultraviolet’ by an up and coming rock group called The Amazons being one of ‘em during this January episode. Reading back on what I wrote then, I sense a bit of disbelief on how they didn’t make it onto BBC’s ‘Sound of 2016’ list. Past me obviously didn’t know The Amazons would make that list in 2017. Other than that, I name-drop similar sounding artists like Young The Giant, Blossoms, and Nothing But Thieves which is actually quite interesting. Thinking back of the mid-10s indie scene, I remember a lot of forgettable (nice contradiction going on there) music being released that time. Listening to this album 8 years after its release makes me realise some tunes on here are quite timeless rather than dated, which many of the tunes from back then tend to be now. Quite an impressive and underexposed feat, that is.

It seems only right to highlight the one song that welcomed The Amazons into my life on that January day in 2016. I wonder if I ever thought I’d be out here in 2025 writing about this exact same song on a different blog, reminiscing about this seemingly unmemorable piece of content I created 9,5 years ago. Funny when things in life come full circle.