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Amyl and the Sniffers’ know their main weapon is the thrilling way their frontwoman skates and spits above the riffage.Credit: John Angus Stewart
Amyl and the Sniffers, Cartoon Darkness
Amy Taylor is keen to show us her breasts. It’s her album cover, so you’d think that would be that. The Slits did it in 1979 for heaven’s sake. But this is 2024, so the artist’s intentions are censored for our protection. Offence is harder to give, and so much easier to take these days. Tough times for the punk at heart.
This modern feedback loop between the individual’s demand for unfettered self-expression and the backlash of instant social outrage is ground zero for the third album by Melbourne-based, globally feted garage rock ratbags Amyl and the Sniffers.
“You’re a dumb c---, you’re an a---hole,” are Taylor’s first words out of the gate. Jerkin’ is a vicious smackdown of critics, trolls and “f---ing spiders” that’s clearly been brewing a while. The latter rhymes with “I am drinking riders” in case you thought she was losing sleep about what you think of her.
Self-definition is a big theme. “I will not be told what I control,” she roars in the meat grinder of It’s Mine. “I am sick of promising everyone that I am the same as others,” she rants later. Her naughty-girl meow is no less defiant in Tiny Bikini: “If I didn’t show up in something spicy/ The cold world would feel even more icy,” she tells the “snags at the party”.
The Sniffers’ sonic recipe remains unapologetically basic: a high-tension thump, thrash and thunder palette more concerned with energy than nuance. Bryce Wilson, Dec Martens and Gus Romer are a perfectly shabby-tight power trio, but they know their main weapon is the thrilling way their frontwoman skates and spits above the riffage.
Self-definition is a big theme of Cartoon Darkness.Credit: John Angus Stewart
Taylor’s tuneless rap sticks to the rollercoaster rails of Chewing Gum and rises to bark and crack at the full-throttle pitch of Motorbike Song. She’s Johnny Rotten’s cartoon kid sister in Pigs but she nails more subtle characters too: a sinister siren for wasted youth chasing Big Dreams, and a surprisingly vulnerable romantic reject in the melodic respite of Bailing On Me.
That song is the bravest departure here from Amyl and the Sniffers’ shaken and slammed formula, doubtless fodder for the keyboard warriors of Jerkin’ to start howling “sell-out”. That’s the price of evolution for any band, but it’s payable immediately in the social media cesspit that clearly plagues Amy Taylor’s head.