In the eight years since Amyl and The Sniffers came together in Melbourne’s sticky pub-rock scene, Amyl and the Sniffers have become masters of balancing power and playfulness. With two critically acclaimed albums under their belt – 2019’s self-titled debut and 2021’s visceral ‘Comfort To Me’ – vocalist Amy Taylor, guitarist Declan Mehrtens, bassist Gus Romer and drummer Bryce Wilson have achieved something unique and remarkable. They are unmistakably “Aussie”, down-to-earth and true to their roots. They are also one of the most exciting young rock bands on the planet.

The band’s live audiences have grown even faster than their reputation, taking them around the world on sold-out tours several times over, playing ever-larger venues throughout Europe, North America and beyond, with recent shows stretching from Mexico to India to Japan. From grassroots clubs shows to major concert halls, the band has become a regular mainstage and headline feature of festivals including Primavera, Glastonbury, Coachella, Green Man, Osheaga, Outside Lands, Best Keep Secret, All Points East and dozens more; and been called up for European and US stadium supports with the likes of Green Day and Foo Fighters. As a live act, the word is well and truly out: if you need a band to decimate a stage, you call Amyl and The Sniffers. 

Since the release of Comfort to Me, the band has seen their horizons broaden exponentially in every way. And it’s this attitude – bigger, brighter, smarter, sharper – that’s fuelling their third album, ‘Cartoon Darkness’. Recorded with producer Nick Launay at Foo Fighters’ 606 Studios in Los Angeles, on the same desk that captured Nirvana’s Nevermind and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, the latest Amyl offering is full of surprises. Musically, Mehrtens, Romer and Wilson have written The Sniffers’ most diverse album yet. It stretches from classic punk to the glammy strut of recent single ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ to the stormy balladry of ‘Big Dreams’ (which is a sonic gear shift worthy of the title). 

‘Bailing On Me’ is another strange delight, “the weirdest, not-Amyl song we’ve ever done,” according to Mehrtens. “Declan wrote it about a girl and he told me I should write sexy lyrics for it but I just couldn’t do it,” laughs Taylor. “It felt sad to me, like a heartbreak song. It definitely wasn’t giving me horny vibes.”

Fans of The Sniffers’ most pugnacious hits will not be disappointed, with the opening track ‘Jerkin’’ taking their love of swear words to a stratospheric new level. ‘Pigs’ and ‘Motorbike Song’ are as heavy and hectic as any riff the Sniffers have written, while ‘Doing In Me Head’ takes Taylor’s trademark declarative rage in new directions, reflecting her age and experience.

Throughout ‘Cartoon Darkness’, Taylor delves into topics that wrangle with ideas of self and the outside world including the fight it takes not to minimise and shrink yourself in the face of it all. Forthcoming single ‘Chewing Gum’ is about trying to negotiate her space and deciding to actively choose the path of fun and freedom. “The chorus is saying: I’m choosing to be young and I’m choosing to be dumb and I’m choosing bad decisions because life is too short to be right all the time,” she explains. It’s not pure nihilism, it’s not pure hedonism, it’s the chaos between the two.

With almost 3.5M Spotify streams at the time of writing, ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ has already hit with its themes of liberation and self-determination. “Where we’re from, we’ve achieved a lot, and people can be really uncomfortable with that. Especially because I’m a woman it’s like you can’t be proud of yourself and you can’t be loud. I’m a loud person – always have been, always will be – and I’ve had to quiet myself down in my dress and in my mannerisms because it was getting attention that was mainly negative. So that song is like, ‘fuck that’,” she says. “I don’t wanna pretend that I haven’t achieved a lot. I don’t wanna pretend I haven’t been successful. I don’t wanna pretend I don’t want to achieve more and dream as big as possible and see how far I can take this, because I do.”

On ‘Tiny Bikini’, Taylor celebrates the pure pleasure of fashion and body autonomy. “I’m usually the only girl in the room and I love wearing spicy clothes and bikinis and make up. I love expressing myself as a scantily-clad lady, so that song’s saying: ‘I don’t wanna have to dress masculine just because I’m surrounded by men, and I don’t want to be interpreted as doing it for all the men that are around me’. But she is quick to point out that it’s not a political song, at least not entirely. It’s meant to be fun, it’s meant to capture the many layers of voyeurism and hypocrisy in the music industry, and it’s also just a great rock song about sexy swimwear.

Across the album there is anger, but there is also a huge capacity for positivity. One side of the band, says Mehrtens, is necessary for the other. “Maybe a misconception about heavier genres is that there’s a lot of negativity, but Amy has such a healthy relationship with anger where it’s therapeutic and it means she has so much space for joy at the same time,” he says. ‘Cartoon Darkness’ might be rooted in the “dark and bizarre, dystopian” modern world but, like its title and like its authors, it’s also committed to silliness and fun; to embracing life as fully as possible.

“If someone’s having a shit day at work, then I hope the album might just reignite that little flame inside them that makes them stand up a bit taller,” says Taylor. “The world is such a cruel and unforgiving place; so many people are down and it’s been such a crazy time. But I don’t think it’s an ugly place, I think it’s joyous. It’s a playground, and that’s why we ache for it. I just really want to make something that’s… I can’t think of a better word…that’s good. I don’t wanna take the piss and just put out trash. I want it to be thoughtful and for it to be meaningful to people in whatever capacity it can be, even if it’s just fun.”

Amyl and The Sniffers have put an enormous amount of work into this record. It means a lot to them. The lyrics mean a lot to Taylor, but she doesn’t want to be prescriptive about what every song means. “If I found out that Brian Eno’s ‘Baby’s On Fire’ was about a candy baby getting dropped on a stove top, I would be devastated. I don’t want to get in the way of what people hear and what they experience. I know the world is hungry for black and white, yes or no, 010101, but I like things that are abstract and complicated. That’s life.’

Cartoon Darkness doesn’t have a neat and tidy narrative. It’s a big, complicated, messy, funny and sometimes deeply felt and serious album. There is no black or white, only colour and shadows.