Amyl and the Sniffers : Cartoon Darkness
There’s one thing that almost every single one of those classic 20th century icons of rock ‘n’ roll—from Bon Scott to Robert Plant—have in common with each other. Have you noticed it? It’s that they’re all men (we can be quite sure about this, because they sang about it a lot). What this means, though, is that no matter how great their overall influence—no matter how widely spread the lingering after-effects of their boisterous charisma may be—there’s one thing that’s conspicuously absent from their varied legacies; any hint whatsoever about a woman’s perspective.
Amyl and the Sniffers don’t have this problem. The band—fronted by vocalist Amy Taylor—dive into their most recent album, Cartoon Darkness, with a ferocious, caustic, hair-raising diatribe about their displeasure toward a certain kind of internet music critic. Not the kind that would ever write for Treble, mind you. More the sort of keyboard warrior motivated by a mixture of helpless lust and misogynistic apoplexy, despising the woman-led band for their success while being quite content, to, ahem, “jerk [his] squirter” (you figure it out) whilst pondering his distaste. It’s a fun, smart, snappy way to kick off the new release, but what’s great about the song isn’t just that it calls a spade a spade (so to speak), but its attitude; it raises a blithely unconcerned middle-finger to the haters with an enthusiasm for the obscene that radiates confidence.
The same goes for the rest of the album. Cartoon Darkness is filthy, lurid, and witheringly self-assured, with songs like “Pigs,” “Me And The Girls,” and “Tiny Bikini” all being bright, brash anthems to partying and rebelling for you to get so drunk you fall over and puke to. The album also carries a significant current of vulnerability along with it as well, present in songs like “U Should Not Be Doing That” or “Bailing On Me”—probably the closest thing on Cartoon Darkness to a ballad—that helps keep the band’s gruff persona from slipping out of winkingly self-aware and into wearisome self-parody.
This being said, I think there is a conversation to be had here about how interesting it is, from an artistic perspective (as opposed to a cultural or political one), to simply revisit established cock-rock tropes from the ‘70s, just with the genders flipped around, which is a trick Cartoon Darkness pulls more than once. But it’s not a conversation in which Amyl and the Sniffers have any interest participating in. “I wanna ride you like a Harley D,” Taylor asserts in “Motorbike Song,” a filthy, stampeding romp of a track whose expression of sexual interest via vehicle simile is about as new to rock ‘n’ roll as the 12-bar blues. Do they care? Absolutely not. The message from the band is clear; get on for the ride, or don’t. We’re having fun either way.
Musically, this record slows the pace just a little compared to previous outings, particularly the band’s last effort, 2021’s Comfort To Me, which livened up the band’s classic punk revivalist sound with some pleasingly cheesy old-school heavy metal flourishes. Such gildings are largely gone from Cartoon Darkness (though it still includes a couple of hardcore slammers, like “Motorbike Song” or “It’s Mine”) in favor of a dustier, cockier, bluesier approach, with riffs and beats that swagger rather than sprint. The instrumentation evokes a kind of dusky, rugged, no-frills feel that you might think of as a heavier, muscled-up version of Heartland rock, if not for the fact that the term refers to a distinctly American phenomenon, and Amyl and the Sniffers hail from Melbourne, Australia. Doesn’t Australia have enough of its own vast expanse of hot, dry nothingness to cultivate that same kind of hardy, yearning, earnest rock? We can’t call it Americana, so maybe Australiana will do. That’s a new album and a new genre—something Amyl and the Sniffers can truly be proud of.
Label: Rough Trade
Year: 2024
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Amyl and the Sniffers : Cartoon Darkness
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