AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS
Cartoon Darkness (Virgin)
FIVE YEARS AGO we got them as a sharpie punk band: anger and sly humour coming at us at full tilt with unforgiving drums and unrelenting guitars that matched the vocal delivery. Two years later they occasionally slowed down, regularly opened up about – shock, horror – feelings, while never running short of spit and bile and sly humour alongside razor-sharp guitars. They were changing, they remained compelling.
Now, on album number three, Amyl And The Sniffers touch you hard, gently, provocatively, suggestively, almost funkily, but always physically; they throw up humour, anger, perspective, simplicity, complexity, individuality. They open with “You’re a dumb cunt, you’re an arsehole/Every time you talk you mumble, grumble”; they close it out with “It goes around, never learn my lesson in this town/Wanna go party all the time, everything else keeps me in line”; and in the middle someone’s meeting the Queen.
TL:DR? They’ve got everything they had, but more, better. They are a full service rock band. And it’s good. Really, really good.
You want floor-pounding stomp, long-hair-in-unison guitars and a just fast enough tempo that puts up red lights of emphasis when they briefly pull back to a grind? That would be Doing In Me Head. Or maybe some swinging undercarriage that easily bears the heaviness, paired with staccato vocals that get playful, and disarming “oohs” just behind them? With just enough of a sniff of something salacious? Tiny Bikini is made for you.
Ever wondered where you could get an early 1980s band mixing in just enough melody to attract, the double speed drums of Manchester punk disco, a slice of inner city surf song, and a solo made to be played in a leather jacket? Look no further than Do It Do It. Or maybe you need an almost dreamy but still beefy straight pop song, sung rather than shouted and not hiding being broken of spirit? Say hi to Bailing On Me.
And lordy lordy lord, you didn’t realise you wanted a moody ballad, leaning into some Goth shadows and flashing a heroin-days guitar solo, did you? But you do, and Big Dreams is expecting you.
The most satisfying part about all this is that none of it feels like an attempt at sounding more important, or running away from their past as some kind of youthful misadventure (though Chewing Gum could easily have been ditched as a regulation, somewhat plodding, rocker).
If anything, Pigs, a heads down/arse up charge of chunky chords and rattling drums, and Motorbike Song, a portable metal bruiser that smells of cigarettes and Brut 33, plugs right into their first and deepest loves.
And they’re not so different that they see any need to turn down the brutal personal lacerations of that opening song, Jerkin’. Fuck yeah!
But they’re not the same people they were five years ago so why not bring some groove and Gary Numanesque robot to Me And The Girls’ cocky little strut when the result – think a bush tucker bash in a collapsing nightclub – is so entertaining? Why shouldn’t they dip their hat to some Hunters & Collectors brass-and-lurching-bass in U Should Not Be Doing That? And why not spread the lyrical interest to matters ecological as well as scatological, affirmations as well as takedowns?
No bloody reason at all when all the things we liked about them are still here – the energy, the slap of force, the puckish as much as punkish provocations – but we’re getting a fuller, wide picture of songwriters and players who have done more, learnt more, tried more.
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APPLE MUSIC: Listen to Amyl And The Sniffers - Cartoon Darkness
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