Amber Run Are Excited For Their Debut Australian Tour
UK alt-rock trio Amber Run get set to celebrate ten years of their breakthrough debut album, 5AM, with their first ever tour of Australia this month. Presented by Destroy All Lines, the band’s first lap of the country will see the band perform 5AM in full.
The trio first captivated audiences in 2014 with the release of 5AM, where they built lasting relationships with a fanbase who found relatability in their deeply moving songwriting. Through their subsequent albums, For A Moment, I Was Lost, Philophobia, and How To Be Human the band have continued to provide the soundtrack to the lives of people all over the world with songs that often cut to the quick of life’s more difficult moments.
Through the years, their early 2014 single I Found, has taken on a life of its own; currently sitting at over half a billion streams having found viral success connecting with a new generation of fans on TikTok, where millions of people have created videos inspired by the track. 2025 has seen Amber Run release brand new versions of I Found and 5AM alongside feature versions with the UK’s Freya Ridings and Canada’s Billianne respectively – a celebration of what their music has meant to millions all over the world. Joshua “Joe” Keogh talks to Hi Fi Way about the tour.
Are you pumped to be heading down to Australia for your very first tour?
Yeah, it’s going to be great. I’m looking forward to it. We’ve had so many friends tour Australia and I’ve had so many friends move there and live there, so it’s going to feel a little bit like I get to see some really old friends as well as come to a really new place. I’ve heard beautiful stuff about it and yeah, really excited.
Has the pressure been there from fans, the “when are you coming?” messages?
There has been some pressure really. It’s funny, I’m not one for stats and all that kind of stuff, but Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne have been three of our top cities for the last three years for Spotify streaming, but we’ve never been. So yeah, we’ve had some pressure. But you know what it’s like touring, we love touring and we do it a lot. It’s an expensive gambit, so coming into a new place always feels a little bit scary, but I think it’s really exciting. It’s been such a terrible winter here as well that coming over and seeing the sun is going to be a real tonic.
When you say touring is a gamble, is that part of the pressure not knowing whether people will turn up or buy tickets early enough so you feel confident it’s a good choice?
I think we were pretty confident that people are going to come, otherwise we wouldn’t have done it. We’re excited to come. I think all the rooms are going to be really fun. You can’t force people to turn up, but touring in general has just got more expensive and a bit more tricky and it’s also a long way away. I’ve got two young kids now as well, so for Australia at least, we’ve been excited to do it for a while. It was on the cards and then I found out about my first little girl and I just didn’t want to be that far away. But now they’re a little bit older and it’s possible, we can get excited about going far abroad and seeing new places. That was one of the reasons we started this band in the first place, to go see the world. We’ve managed it for years and years, but there are still places we haven’t been. Australia’s always been high on the list. Such an amazing music culture, such a shared experience with being English. We’re pumped to come and yeah, there’s pressure because you want to sell tickets and bands have their own economies — if we don’t do well, our managers don’t get paid. It is tricky. But you come back to the fact that you started a band at sixteen or seventeen to make music and see new places. That was the main driving force for doing this tour, going on an adventure and we’re lucky it looks like people are going to turn up.
With a debut album like 5AM, is it almost beyond your wildest dreams how far the music has gone and where it’s taken you?
When you’re a kid and you start this stuff off you’re just hoping to impress your mate and hoping your mates aren’t gonna crucify you for it being really bad, and then it turns into something more it’s crazy, especially 5AM, because we were super young when we wrote that, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. It’s crazy that it still holds up now and people are still interested and still love the music. It is nuts. Whenever we have to get on a flight with all our music gear, I pinch myself a bit and remind myself how lucky we are. The privilege of the whole thing. I’m really excited. One of my dearest friends in the world lives in Byron Bay, just an excuse to see her again and play the music. It’s going to be wicked. I’m a big coffee snob as well and I’ve heard Australia’s a big coffee spot.
When you reflect on a milestone like ten years of 5AM, what does it mean to you now when you look back on it?
Well, it makes me feel well old because it still feels like yesterday. It just makes me feel super proud about how far the music’s come. It’s really interesting because it’s felt like an era of the solo artist for quite a long time now, and for us as a band, as a collaborative thing, to have lasted twelve, thirteen years, to still be putting out records, to be really proud of the first one… it just feels like a privilege. That first record’s given us so much. A couple of those songs have really taken on a life of their own and people have really responded to them. Without that first one we wouldn’t have been able to write, tour, and record the subsequent ones. I’m really grateful for 5AM and excited to bring that tour out to Australia. We did it around Europe and the UK and they were beautiful shows, songs we hadn’t played since they were recorded probably. It felt really fun to revisit it and kind of shake the hand of my eighteen‑year‑old self and be like, “Yeah, these aren’t terrible songs, mate. Well done.”
Do you look at playing it start to end, or do you mix up the order?
Yeah, so on this 5AM tour we were playing it back to front. The first track on the record is I Found, which is most definitely our most successful song, so we tend to leave that one till the encore so people don’t walk out after the first track. But apart from that, yeah, cover to cover, and then we play some songs from our other records in the second half.
Do some of these songs, especially the ones you don’t play much now, take a bit of practice to fit your current live dynamic?
I won’t lie, when we first started rehearsing for it there were some teething issues. It’s crazy how much you change, your opinions, your habits, after ten years. Going back to it is interesting. You’d hope we’d get better at our instruments and what we do after time, but it was fun to go back because they felt naïve and innocent and like three‑chord songs without trying to impress anyone. Some we’ve complicated a bit more to keep them interesting, and some we’ve kept the same because the feeling was right. None of them are overly complex, we’re just trying to keep them interesting and bring a few of them back to where we live now.
Do you feel pressure, especially having set such a lofty bar on the first album, to contemplate the next one?
I don’t really think so. We’ve always lived a little bit outside the pressure of charts and positions and critics’ opinions. Maybe I sound like a purist or a bit woo‑woo, I don’t know, but I don’t think any of us really care. We make music, and it’s not like it’s not mainstream, but what we said when we started this band was everything has to have an emotional currency. As long as we achieve that, as long as there’s motive behind the music, that’s what matters. Hey, I wouldn’t turn down another multi‑platinum single, that would be fun. But I’m not holding onto it or feeling pressure from it. Pressure can make great things, but when it comes to making art, anything you can do to have a good time while making it is going to make it better. The end product sounds better because you’re not overthinking or second‑guessing what whoever wants this time. We did that on the third record and it wasn’t fun to make. So we don’t do that anymore. You start to work out what works for you, and getting hung up on numbers and opinions is the kind of thing that makes me sick, keeps me in bed.
Is there any new music on the horizon, or is that something you’ll focus on after touring?
We’re actually touring quite a bit at the moment on some different stuff. We released an EP called Sunflower, which is really sick and has a folky tint to it. It’s been really fun. We’ve got the start of another record. Making music is well fun, beats working for a living. We find it quite easy to sit down and write music, and hopefully it’s good. I think it’s really good. So yeah, there’s definitely new music coming up and shaping up. Hopefully we can bring that tour out to Australia as well. This is certainly the start, we’re not just coming to dip our toe and say hello. We’re a band that wants to come out, meet people, play in new places, and keep coming back. That’s the joy of touring, seeing old friends whenever you return to cities you’ve been before. I’d love for that to be how it feels coming to Australia.
Interview By Rob Lyon
Catch Amber Run on the following dates, tickets from Destroy All Lines…
