Artist: Amyl and the Sniffers
Album: Cartoon Darkness
Reviewer: Tatiana Silva
Amyl and the Sniffers’ junior album is nothing groundbreaking in the sound of Aussie pub rock, but the attitude of frontwoman Amy Taylor easily carries this album into my top 10 for 2024. Like the short-lived, euphoria-inducing inhalant the band is named after, Cartoon Darkness is 33 minutes of bullshit-ridding incantation backed by the same inebriating instrumentation that got me hooked with their 2021 album Comfort to Me.
One of my favorite mantras from the album’s “U Should Not Be Doing That” highlights the growth in musicianship from this Melbourne-based pub-rock punk quartet:
I’m working own my worth, I’m working on my work, I’m working on who I am
I’m working on what is wrong, what is right, and where I am
Amy gives us her most complex melodies to date, we hear saxophone for the first time in “U Should Not Be Doing That” and the band proves they’re more than just rowdy pub rockers with debut ballads “Big Dreams” and “Bailing on Me.” Lyrically I am obsessed with Taylor’s bluntness in disregarding the opps (misogynists, racists, fascists and, well, anyone just generally f*cking up the vibe). I do have to throw a bit of shade on the “they didn’t want to see us succeed” trope that comes up throughout the album, as the band was touring internationally and opening for acts like Foo Fighters within the first year of their self-titled debut in 2019, which also went on to win the 2019 ARIA Best Rock Album of the Year. I am grateful to have downtempo moments in Cartoon Darkness to flesh out my admiration for Taylor while she sings about heartbreak and wanting to escape a place that feels inescapable. It’s a unique feeling to feel like you’re growing with a band, as Comfort to Me did not find me well but served as a driving force to get me to where I am today. The switch-up in styles has me genuinely eager to hear what new sounds and ideas the band will conjure in following projects, and how I will also have grown and changed by the next time we meet.
Amyl and the Sniffers continue to be the band that I would recommend when you need to lock in to just surviving the next day (because sometimes it be like that). With all of their albums ringing in below 40 minutes, they know how to drive a beat forward with clear, crisp dictation that can be dicey to find within the genre. Taylor’s lyrics read like spells and will easily have you sold on sticking things out to spite it all.
In the chance you don’t need any of Taylor’s spellwork lyricism, I’d highlight “Tiny Bikini” and “Doing In Me Head” as instant on-repeat tracks, the kind that feel eerily familiar but also so tingly new you can’t stop until you’re absolutely sick of them. “Chewing Gum” is mid-tempo for the album and pulled at my heartstrings, as I’m a big cheesehead for any gum/love reference ever since I heard Air’s “Playground Love.” The penultimate track, “Going Somewhere,” has a dark, flirty playfulness that leads us into the final track “Me and the Girls,” which holds my favorite mantra:
Me and the girls are stealing our napkins, me and the girls don’t want to be taxed
Me and the girls want free abortions, you and the boys can’t even get waxed
Me and the girls, we don’t want protection, me and the girls don’t want to be boxed
Me and the girls are gonna go party, you and the boys can shut the fuck up
So I am once again pouring my wee little heart out and asking you to indulge in less than an hour of primal, somatic and strutty chords. And if you’re an overachiever, watch the official music video for “U Should Not Be Doing That” – all I have to say is Steven Ogg.
Until next time!
XOXO Tati