Like the perfect comeback belatedly snapping into the mind during a shower, Amyl and the Sniffers’ second album calls back to a former antagonizer with newfound clarity. Two years ago, while the band was touring their self-titled debut, a “gobby pre-teen” accosted singer Amy Taylor on the street in London, calling her ugly. On “Freaks to the Front,” she reclaims the term with pride: “I’m short, I’m shy, I’m fucked up, I’m bloody ugly!” she sneers, pulling a B-Rabbit out of her hat by disarming any future fuckbois before issuing a warning: “Get out my way/Don't bloody touch me!”
Comfort to Me finds the Australian quartet at its most resolute, as Taylor’s lyrics pull us into her endlessly vacillating mind, made all the more relatable for its many contradictions. She wants love but doesn’t need anything from anyone. She wants to smash capitalism but isn’t quite sure she cares enough to pull down the hammer. Sweaty and surrounded in the pit, she’s just moshing on her own.
Despite the internal duality, Amyl and the Sniffers radiate confidence, even as they’re cribbing from the annals of hardcore history. The band’s secret is in doubling down on, simply, ripping like hell. Produced by Courtney Barnett collaborator Dan Luscombe, Comfort to Me is crammed wall-to-wall with the primal currency of rock music: riffs. And while many of their well-creased notes have been in circulation for a while, they aren’t counterfeit bills. After a few years destroying stages and dives across the world, the Melbourne-based band who once mocked themselves as puerile musicians can finally shred.
Of course, with musical growth and big-time knob twiddlers—Comfort to Me was mastered by Bernie Grundman, who has also worked on blockbusters like Thriller and Aja —comes great responsibility, or at least expectations. Amyl and the Sniffers have expanded into a Colossus-sized version of themselves, magnifying and perfecting what they already did pretty well instead of caving in the foundation of their sound and starting anew. Why change when you’ve conquered the formula?
Anyone who has worn a Wipers pin will recognize a good many of these riffs, or at least detect their essences: “Laughing” reeks of the jagged staccato leads of D.C. punks the Monorchid and its sassier offspring Skull Kontrol. The band squats in X and Gun Club territory on the punk-blues breakup song “No More Tears.” Guitarist Dec Martens’ deft post-chorus line on “Security” is played by a man who I’d wager has heard Magazine’s “Shot by Both Sides.” Their music presents a canon of rock riffs like a succession of waves crashing on the same beach. Amyl and the Sniffers are, as ever, shamelessly chugging coldies by the surf.
Comfort to Me is the band’s heaviest outing yet, and never more clearly than on “Capital,” a Motörhead-influenced bounce that outlines the struggle between activism and apathy. Despite the transparency of the homage, Taylor’s idiosyncratic delivery takes the lead. As she spits tongue twisters like “slapping on the pokies and buying all the backy” at a frenetic pace, she races alongside the instrumentation, nearly outpacing it. It’s like she’s in the room, screaming in your face, determined to spill her mind out before the song has a chance to end.
Taylor has also evolved as a lyricist. No shade to early romps like “70’s Street Munchies” or “Stole My Push Bike,” but punk’s reigning snarl champion has figured out how to address weighty issues without being didactic or surrendering the snotty squeal that made those early tracks so alluring. On “Knifey,” the band slows it down and lets the barre chords ring, allowing Taylor’s heartbreaking plea to burst through. ”All I ever wanted was to walk by the park/All I ever wanted was to walk by the river, see the stars/Please! Stop fucking me up,” she begs. But she’s armed and ready: “Out comes the night, out comes my knifey/This is how I get home nicely.”
Taylor is either recalling a personal experience and the knife is her weapon of defense, or she’s channelling the ubiquitous dread all women face. In switching pronouns from “I” to “we” halfway through the track, Taylor inverts the “alone in the pit” trope from the beginning of the album; this psychic pain is near-universal. But, as ever, Taylor’s knotty internal struggle reigns: “I turn around and backtrack, because I ain’t that tough.” Comfort to Me transports us to a familiar, paradoxical world: uncertain, harsh, and magnetic.
Buy: Rough Trade
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