Amyl & The Sniffers - Notes from Pig City

The Chats: Get Fucked

Let’s start with the title. The Chats don’t care what you think, and even less (I hope) what the Guardian thinks. This band did not give a continental about what Karl Stefanovic thought when they ran around the set of the Today Show. This is entirely as it should be for a reprobate punk band from Pig City, aka Brisbane (via the Sunshine Coast).

That said, there are some signs of growing pains on Get Fucked, the follow-up to 2020’s High Risk Behaviour. In some ways, this album is to the Chats what Leave Home was to Ramones: it’s tighter, with better playing and a tougher sound, but lacks some of the naive charm that made their debut so endearing. They have also lost guitarist Josh Price, and he takes a little of the Chats’ humour with him.

New Josh (Hardy) is a killer, though. His playing sets fire to Struck By Lightning and Panic Attack, songs that crackle with all the nervous energy of their titles. The singer and bass player, Eamon Sandwith, stretches out a bit more lyrically, too, reminding us that, at the height of the Black Summer bushfires, he gave us the Christmas in Hawaii song I Hope Scott’s House Burns Down.… Read more..

Amyl & The Sniffers: Comfort To Me

Music / June 3, 2023 / 3 minutes of reading

Anger, as the punk formerly known as Johnny Rotten put it, is an energy. For Amy Taylor, singer for Melbourne band Amyl & The Sniffers, it’s a renewable resource. “It’s my currency,” she tells us on Guided By Angels, the rip-roaring opener from the band’s second album, Comfort To Me. An electric performer, Taylor crackles like a live wire with too much current running through it.

One can only imagine what Melbourne’s long lockdown, and not being able to perform, has done to the psyche of someone like Taylor. Comfort To Me gets it all out in an eruption that’s more intense, and much less playful, than their self-titled debut from 2019. Taylor’s voice is defiantly flat, yet more powerful – like a poetry slammer fronting the Cosmic Psychos, the Sniffers’ spiritual forebears.

In Taylor’s words, she’s a “little bit classy, bit of a rat”. But she’s no cartoon figure, and the lowbrow profanity of a song like Don’t Need A Cunt Like You To Love Me is no joke. Like much of Comfort To Me, it’s an expression of independence and confidence. “I’m a businesswoman, run my own company,” she spits. The Sniffers swing furiously behind her in defence: “She’s 10 out of 10 / You’re so-so / You think you can fuck with her?… Read more..

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