Amyl and the Sniffers Don’t Need Punk to Be Saved
Every few years, somebody declares punk dead. Then Amy Taylor walks onto a stage looking like she has come to settle the argument personally.
– JAMBALOO EDITORIAL TEAM
The Melbourne quartet has spent the past decade turning a familiar collection of punk-rock ingredients into something that feels immediate again. The guitars are fast, the choruses are blunt and the songs rarely waste time introducing themselves. What separates Amyl and the Sniffers from the growing crowd of bands rediscovering pub rock, hardcore and late-’70s punk is the absolute conviction with which they play it.
There is no distance between Amy Taylor and the material. She does not perform anger as a costume or rebellion as a history lesson. She spits, dances, prowls and throws herself into every song as though the situation has only just happened and nobody has explained why she should calm down.
That approach has carried the band from its self-titled 2019 debut through 2021’s Comfort to Me and into its third album, Cartoon Darkness. Released in October 2024, the record was produced by Nick Launay and recorded at Foo Fighters’ 606 Studios in Los Angeles. It widened the band’s sound without sanding down its rougher edges, moving between the direct attack of “Jerkin’” and “Doing in Me Head,” the swaggering “U Should Not Be Doing That” and the unexpectedly reflective “Big Dreams.”
Taylor described the album as a response to climate anxiety, war, artificial intelligence, online politics and the increasingly strange experience of trying to remain human inside a world controlled by technology.
Those subjects could have produced a painfully serious record. Instead, Cartoon Darkness remains funny, physical and proudly unreasonable. The band understands that sometimes the most useful response to modern life is not another carefully considered statement. Sometimes it is a two-minute song that makes you want to put your fist through the ceiling.
The rest of the world appears to have caught up. U Should Not Be Doing That earned the band its first Grammy nomination, while Cartoon Darkness collected four major ARIA Awards, including Album of the Year, Best Group and Best Rock Album.
Dallas already knows what the band can do. Amyl and the Sniffers’ April 2025 appearance at the House of Blues was a breathless display of control disguised as complete disorder. The Longhorn Backyard should offer a different kind of setting. Instead of containing the band inside a traditional club, the outdoor space gives the songs somewhere to travel and the audience more room to lose whatever composure they arrived with. Amyl and the Sniffers are not a group best experienced while quietly appreciating the musicianship, although there is plenty of that underneath the chaos. Their music asks for movement, sweat and a certain willingness to wake up sore the following morning.
Punk does not need to be rescued, revived or returned to its former glory. It only needs bands willing to play it like it still matters.
