In Teddy Roosevelt’s oft-quoted “man in the arena” speech, he famously advised his audience that “it is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.” Had he written that address in the midst of a Wake in Fright-style outback bender, it might have come out a little like Amyl and the Sniffers’ cathartically vulgar “Jerkin’”: “You are just a critic/And you want to hit it … Keep jerkin’ on your squirter/You will never get with me.” “It is not the critic who counts,” indeed. “Jerkin’” kicks off Cartoon Darkness, the Australian punk band’s third album, and it sets an aggrieved, chip-on-shoulder tone that infiltrates even its sunniest songs. The defensiveness is understandable, if a bit exhausting.
The Sniffers, led by their firecracker frontwoman Amy Taylor, have enjoyed a steady rise over their near-decade of existence. The band started in 2016 when its members were housemates in Melbourne, and a pair of rough, rowdy EPs quickly established them as adept pub-rock revivalists. By the time they released their bracing, Wipers-meets-AC/DC self-titled LP in 2019, the Sniffers were already opening for Foo Fighters on tour and getting talked up by famous fans like Jarvis Cocker. Suddenly, the Australian band was taking heat on two fronts—from scene trolls who accused Amyl and the Sniffers of selling out, and from everyday bogans who looked askance at their sudden celebrity. They were the tall poppy, and they needed cutting down.
At least, that’s the universe Taylor constructs on Cartoon Darkness. Beyond “Jerkin’,” there’s “U Should Not Be Doing That,” a smoldering thesis statement for the album, anchored by a thick bass groove and ringed in smoky saxophone: “I was in LA/Shaking my shit,” Taylor sings. “While you were down in Melbourne saying, ‘Fuck that bitch.’” On the Rose Tattoo-ish “Pigs,” an unnamed interlocutor is a “sucker”—Taylor, naturally, is a “rocker,” who’s “living the wet dream.” Telling your haters to fuck off is a reliable rock’n’roll theme, but Cartoon Darkness sometimes seems paranoid, hung up on adversaries who, it seems, haven’t exactly stood in the way of the band’s success. It’s the “nobody believed in us” cliché of championship sports teams, a theme that can become tiring when repeated too often.
Besides, Taylor doesn’t need to keep rehashing small-time fights. Some of the Sniffers’ most powerful moments have come when she’s confronted broader feminist concerns with striking candidness. On Comfort to Me, the band’s 2021 album, she reclaimed misogynists’ epithets on the life-affirming “Freaks to the Front,” and narrated a woman’s anxious, armed walk through the park on “Knifey”: “Out comes the night, out comes my knifey/This is how I get home nicely.” These fights seem to spark more cutting insights from Taylor, and on Cartoon Darkness, she spits in the face of body-shamers (“Tiny Bikini”), asshole social media commenters (“Doing in Me Head”), and Xbox-playing man-children (“Me and the Girls”).
Taylor’s attitude remains inseparable from her voice. She’s a forceful presence on the microphone, with a broad Australian accent that bores its way into every syllable of her speak-sing delivery. On Cartoon Darkness, she’s clearly put in work to evolve as a vocalist, giving her most melodic performance yet. Thankfully, her voice has lost little of its edge or clarity. You can’t really sing about “jerkin’ on your squirter” without affixing a sneer, and Taylor sounds delighted to oblige. On the record’s best songs, she and the band strike a balance between a newfound melodic sophistication and their driving, aggressive roots. “Chewing Gum” is a love song wrapped in razor wire, with a sweetly simple riff and shuffling drums that march, inexorably, to a late-song eruption of face-melting guitar. “Doing in Me Head” is built on a classic Sniffers foundation, but it boasts a stomping, half-speed pre-chorus and an ante-upping bridge—evidence of the band leveling up its confidence. These new developments sound like progress.
Not every big swing makes contact. The ultra-earnest ballads “Big Dreams” and “Bailing on Me” are overly sleepy, and they interrupt the flow the album establishes with its faster songs. Far better are the record’s experimental flourishes, like the sax on “U Should Not Be Doing That” and the inspired, oddball pairing of jaw harp and vocoder on “Me and the Girls.” (Taylor also uncorks a pseudo-rapped cadence for the song’s verses, which might be cheesy if she didn’t sell it with such glee.) It’s exciting to hear a band that’s so thoroughly mastered three-chord pub-rock get a little freaky. So much of Cartoon Darkness is dedicated to lashing out against doubters—people who don’t believe Amyl and the Sniffers have earned their keep, or who don’t think they have a “Me and the Girls” in them. Perhaps it’s not the best use of the band’s considerable talents to keep fixating on naysayers and paranoia—but as long as Amyl and the Sniffers are stalked by those concerns, it’s at least nice to hear the band rebuke them with humor and verve.
