Part of the appeal of the Roundhouse, a famous north London venue, is that if a gig ever becomes boring, you can gaze at its vaulted, jointed ceiling – a marvel of the industrial age. It’s a safe bet that no one checks the architecture tonight, or on the other two nights of this sold-out residency. Because punk crossover stars Amyl and the Sniffers are never dull: they go off like a long-haul firecracker, detonating time and again.
Their ingredients are, yes, consistent – the thuggish judder of Gus Romer’s bass, the wallop of Bryce Wilson’s drums, the unapologetic squall of Declan Mehrtens’s electric guitar and singer Amy Taylor’s fierce invective – against predatory men, internet trolls and people who seek to muzzle her. They often feel like the same set of adversaries. But the Australian band rebuild their pub-glam-punk rock Lego again and again, with surprising variety.
Partly, this is down to a new, third album, Cartoon Darkness, released last month, which expands the Sniffers’ sound while retaining its meaty heft. It is already pushing the band further along their trajectory from the Melbourne pub rock underground to support slots with Foo Fighters (earlier this year), Green Day (2022) and – next summer – Fontaines DC, all in a few short years.
The Sniffers’ way with a pop melody comes to the fore tonight on the lead single, U Should Not Be Doing That, a terrific cheerleader chant about tall-poppy syndrome and haters getting in your head. For range, there’s even a slow song called Big Dreams, where Taylor encourages someone to pull themselves out of a bad place. Mehrtens and Romer conjure up some unprecedented – for them – widescreen moodiness.
But Amyl and the Sniffers also share some of their compatriots AC/DC’s strange power to make a pretty finite set of sounds sing anew, repeatedly. The excellent Jerkin’ – also off the new record – is as lurid and straightforward a sally as they have ever penned. “You’re a dumb cunt, you’re an arsehole,” begins Taylor, before urging creepy losers to “Keep jerkin’ on your squirters/You will never get with me!”
The overall Sniffer effect is a little like Iggy and the Stooges – elastic frontperson, raw power behind – via the quirky Aussieness of Colin from Accounts. And their not remotely secret weapon is Taylor’s magnetic presence, as she headbangs on the drum riser, spits, punches the air like a mixed martial arts fighter and then runs down the photographers’ pit end to end, grinning like a lunatic.
Apart from Mehrtens, who favours more hair and fabric than his companions, none of the band are wearing much: Wilson in just shorts, Romer shirtless with a shaved head and Taylor in tiny black bondage shorts. Her right to wear whatever she wants is defended in songs such as Tiny Bikini.
Taylor’s feathered early 1980s hairstyle and manic expression, meanwhile, bring to mind photographer Ellen von Unwerth’s prom-queen-about-to-go-Carrie cover shot for Hole’s 1994 album Live Through This. It’s infectious, seeing someone modelling such a lack of inhibition, such weaponised derangement. As a measure of the success of their formula, the band have booked an even bigger north London venue, the 10,000-plus capacity Alexandra Palace for this time next year.
Of course, there is also a softer underbelly to Taylor’s emotional washboard abs. The set has room for relatively soppy songs such as Security, about sweet talking your way past a bouncer. What might be her magnum opus, Guided by Angels, from 2021’s Comfort to Me LP, describes the energy coursing through her body as an otherworldly possession via some swaggering yelps.
Cartoon Darkness is, then, an analysis of the pitfalls of getting bigger – opinionated scenesters, more jerks – that simultaneously invites more people into their tent. It also deals, off and on, with the state of the world.
Between songs, Taylor rails against someone convicted of sexual assault becoming president of the US. But she wonders how many more are out there, unconvicted, “running shit and we just don’t know about it”. Her conclusion? “Burn it to the ground! Get your titties out! Live your life!”
Here, as throughout the Sniffers’ wider discography, there’s a push-pull between pessimism and energetic pleasure-seeking, spiked with punk’s can-do indomitability. Taylor feels “pretty doomsday” about things, she confides at one point. The Sniffers’ bleak song Facts confirms those instincts. The chorus is the Sex Pistols-y throwback: “N-O future!”
Do It Do It, by contrast, finds Taylor “climbing up the mountaintop” while others “were still tucked in their bed”. She confides that the message of Cartoon Darkness is that the future is just a sketch, a cartoon, not yet written. “Maybe we’re not gonna crash head-first into some fuckin’ apocalypse, maybe it’s gonna be something else,” she offers. If nothing else, Amyl and the Sniffers have every right to be rosy about their own fortunes.
