SNIFFERY WHEN WET

Built in 1915, Logan Square Auditorium has played host to a massive number of events—from weddings to performances, even wrestling matches—in all its storied years. But while there’s no ring or referee in sight, tonight’s headliners, Melbourne four-piece Amyl and the Sniffers, are nonetheless laying an epic smackdown on the historic Chicago ballroom. For all of the chaotic punk and metal shows that have called this place home, it rarely sees a band go so hard that the floorboards start to shake. Amyl and the Sniffers might have given this venue its most ferocious crowd ever.

The atmosphere of the show—part of the band’s almost entirely sold-out North American tour—is as chaotic and festive as the wild rainbow of colored lights projected across the ornately plastered walls and ceilings. While the floor bounces rhythmically, dancers, moshers, and stage divers cut loose to Amyl’s blistering mix of punk, garage, hard rock, and hardcore, intensifying during their most aggressive cuts, such as “Choices,” off their 2021 album, Comfort to Me. Everything is loud, hot, and sweaty—and it feels fucking great. If the crowd is trying to make up for some of the good times they lost to the pandemic, the Sniffers are their commanders in chief. There’s drummer Bryce Wilson pounding the ever-loving crap out of his kit; bassist Gus Romer firing up the crowd with calls to “get rowdy” between songs; and guitarist Declan Martens, whose vintage style gives the impression he time-traveled to the venue from 1985 to chug out loose but unflappable riffs.

At the center of the maelstrom is Amy Louise Taylor— the keeper of the namesake “Amyl,” which is also the inhalant over-the-counter drug known to many as “poppers.” Dressed in a crocheted bikini top, tiny denim cutoff shorts adorned with cherry appliques, and knee-high leather boots, she’s a pint-sized powerhouse. Add in her bleached hair, command of the crowd, onstage bodybuilder poses, and the previously mentioned chaos that ensues with audiences, and it wouldn’t be a massive stretch to confuse Amy Taylor with Ric Flair. With a toothy and mischievous grin, she zigzags across the stage, revving up the first few rows until a circle pit erupts, and taunts the much taller Martens—literally shaking him until he stoically unleashes an incendiary solo. If there were ever any question before, it is now totally evident: Amy was born to command the stage. She’s the Energizer Bunny, the “Rebel Girl” Kathleen Hanna pined for as a BFF, and arguably the first punk singer since the Gits’ Mia Zapata (R.I.P.) to so expertly fuse hardcore fury and riotous rock ’n’ roll with moments of self-deprecating humor and disarming vulnerability (such as on “Knifey,” a vivid depiction of trying to get home safe at night when you’re alone and female).

The crowd eats it all up, and after the Sniffers discharge their final song of the night—an explosive version of “Some Mutts (Can't Be Muzzled)”—the energy spills out into the Chicago streets, with a couple of concertgoers pausing to etch graffiti onto the venue walls on their way down the stairs.

“Live shows are so exciting [these days] because everyone’s got so much tension to release, and things to forget about, and things to move on to,” Taylor says over Zoom the following weekend. “To cling to something fun and positive and interesting and carefree for a moment is pretty special.”

By all indications, that’s exactly the kind of experience Amyl and the Sniffers want to provide for their fans. But doing it night after night can take a toll, and nearly five weeks into their tour, they’re clearly exhausted. They were too busy to meet me in person in Chicago, but we agreed to connect from the road a week later—less than ideal, but sure, why not? But when I log on, they’re inexplicably...missing? After a flurry of emails and text messages, CREEM finally locates the tour manager, who offers no clues or excuses for their absence. At that point, we’re forced to reschedule four hours later during the worst possible moment for any overworked touring band, the short period after their drive between show locations (in this case from Brooklyn to Philadelphia) and before the doors open for their gig.

It’s their second-to-last show before some much-needed time off; Taylor’s heading back to New York, while “the boys,” as she refers to them, will book it to Lisbon. Four days later, they’ll regroup in London, where they'll kick off the next leg of their tour with a string of U.K. shows before a month-long stretch of arenas and stadiums across Europe with Green Day and Weezer. Shortly after that, they'll be back in the States, where they'll play Primavera Sound Los Angeles on Sept. 8 before launching another full-scale headlining tour. One thing is certain, no one can say they aren’t working for it.

It’s easy to romanticize the success they’ve already experienced as a relatively new band (they formed in 2016), but as they settle into the greenroom at Philadelphia’s Underground Arts for our call, things look more grueling than glamorous. I cringe—on the inside, hopefully—at the idea of making them sit through yet another interview with yet another journalist at what’s obviously a less-than-stellar moment. One member looks like he might pass out on the sofa at any second. I ask a question that hangs in the air to such an extent I wonder if their screen froze (it hadn’t). If someone were to walk in and offer an escape on condition that anyone who leaves must immediately undergo intensive oral surgery without anesthesia or novocaine, I imagine some of them would strongly entertain the thought (hell, even I might be tempted!). But as their late, great, fellow Australian Bon Scott once sang in regards to AC/DC's road to fame: “It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock ’n’ roll.” We all make it through relatively unscathed, and Taylor (the most chipper of the bunch) later confesses that they are all suffering from fatigue and burnout. Who could blame them?

Born out of an impromptu jam session between housemates who connected through Melbourne’s DIY scene, Amyl and the Sniffers wrote, recorded, and self-released their first EP, Giddy Up, within a day. They made their live debut about a week later. Pandemic aside, they’ve continued on a rather rocket-like trajectory ever since. They gained momentum with their hip-shaking 2017 EP Big Attraction, touring for the better part of a year and signing with Australia’s Flightless Records, owned by then-King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard drummer Eric Moore. Things heated up even more with their 2019 self-titled debut fulllength, which came out on Flightless in Australia, ATO in the States (making them a bit of an outlier for a label more associated with comparatively chill roots and blues-rock than maniacal punk and garage), and Rough Trade in the U.K. Beyond the tour and festival circuit, Taylor—and, occasionally, the full band—landed high-fashion modeling gigs for Gucci, among others, while back at home Amyl and the Sniffers was nominated for the 2019 Australian Music Prize and snagged the 2019 ARIA award for Best New Rock Album.

It’s a far cry from life in Taylor’s hometown of Mullumbimby, a laid-back enclave in New South Wales with fewer than 4,000 residents. “Where I grew up, I never went to a venue of more than 150 to 200 capacity—until I started playing venues that big,” she says.

No matter where you’re from, though, transitioning from playing tiny pubs to giant stages within a couple of years can be a mindfuck. Wilson says Amyl’s shows have organically grown tighter and stronger as a result of the challenge. That said, there are still moments when the reality of it all hits hard. “Sometimes you pause and reflect during a set—or sometimes 1 do, anyway—and think, 'Holy shit... What am I doing in Chicago playing for a thousand people?”’ he says.

In the U.S., it’s striking to see a band you could imagine playing house shows in your city’s DIY scene or downing shots at the grimiest local watering hole command the level of crossover adoration Amyl are starting to receive here. What's more, their audience is somewhat diverse. The crowd at the Chicago show, for example, was roughly half women or nonbinary, and there were several sets of punk teens in attendance with their punk parents. “It’s a lot more heartwarming to see people who aren’t usually at the front, or even at punk shows at all, [at our concerts],” Martens says. “To me it’s really nice, and it makes me feel good about myself.”

That popularity is all the more striking when you consider that despite Amyl’s obvious retro leanings, trying to pinpoint their influences has left plenty of their international fan base (and the music press) scratching their heads. Concurrently, the band is mystified at some of the reference points projected onto them. Yes, they’re inspired by a number of classic punk and garage bands. No, iconic groups such as the Damned, the Buzzcocks, and Blondie aren’t necessarily at the top of that list. Nor are Iggy and the Stooges, whose name gets thrown around most liberally in terms of their music—likely due to Taylor’s turbocharged shake appeal. “I love Iggy Pop, respect Iggy and the Stooges—fuckin’ hero, fuckin’ icon and pioneer,” she said in response to the ongoing comparisons in a 2021 interview with Louder Than War. “But honestly, I’ve probably listened to his album once or twice.”

That freshness is certainly part of the sonic attraction, but where does the disconnect come from? We’re all— to various degrees—products of our environment, and Amyl and the Sniffers cut their teeth in the Australian underground. In their early days, their regional identity was so important to them that they all fashioned their hair into mullets in an homage to sharpies, a ’60s/’70s subculture often associated with Melbourne’s pub rock scene, producing bands such as Rose Tattoo and the Aztecs. The 1970s birthed foundational Australian punk and garage groups such as the Saints (who became the first non-American punk band to release a single when they put out “(I'm) Stranded” in September 1976), Radio Birdman, and the Celibate Rifles, all acolytes of the high-energy Detroit rock music made by the likes of the Stooges, MC5, and Alice Cooper, as well as the early generations of punk and glam rock bands out of New York and London.

“Our early-’70s culture was hyper-macho, being a prison colony and all that,” says Australian musician and former Drones frontman Gareth Liddiard, whose latest band Tropical Fuck Storm collaborated with Taylor on a cover of the Saints’ “This Perfect Day” in April 2020. “We had a version of skinheads called sharpies and fullon criminal bikie gangs and police forces that were very violent and corrupt. The biggest bands—like the Aztecs, and Coloured Balls, and AC/DC—sounded more like the prequel to a prison brawl than free love. So when the Saints, X, Radio Birdman, Birthday Party, and people like that finally came along, as effeminate as they were compared to their forebears, they were pretty terrifying.” [We like to think CREEM had a tiny bit to do with all that terror in those pre-internet and pre-MTV days. As Radio Birdman guitarist and Michigan transplant to Australia Deniz Tek told The Vinyl District in 2017, “We got CREEM magazine the minute it came off the boat. ” —Ed.]

Due to geographic isolation and the harsh realities of the ’70s recording industry, though, most of those bands didn’t get much—or any—chance to make inroads in the States outside of the underground (though groups such as Birdman and the Scientists still have devout cult followings today). But while much of the world missed out, they cast a magnificent shadow on subsequent generations of musicians in Australia, including Melbourne stalwarts (and AmRep alumni) Cosmic Psychos and local rockers Drunk Mums, whom members of Amyl and the Sniffers regularly name-check as regional favorites.

Aussie musician and producer Mikey Young—whose musical rap sheet includes playing with Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Total Control, and the Ooga Boogas, as well as mastering Amyl’s 2018 compilation release of their first two EPs, describes the essence of Australian punk as “possibly an overall healthy balance of taking ourselves too seriously while not taking ourselves too seriously. ”

“I feel like because it is harder to tour and have a career here—there are a couple of good cities—less bands think about how to ‘make it,’ or think of [music] as a financial opportunity,” Young says. “In general, that probably leads to people doing what they want, which is a pretty healthy thing: to make music where you don’t care what other people think about it, and if they like it, that’s a bonus.”

At this point you’d be hard-pressed to find another band that represents the slow burn to explosion of Australian punk other than Amyl and the Sniffers. That said, when asked if they feel like ambassadors for Australian punk while touring abroad, Amyl collectively shrug. “We get told that we don’t really sound like anyone else, if that means anything,” Wilson says. “But I wouldn’t label us as ambassadors, probably.”

Mulling over what makes Australian rock and punk bands distinct from their peers in other parts of the world, though, did conjure some loose ideas. “We’re cheeky and a bit rude,” she says. “It’s probably aggressively less threatening, while also still maintaining the rage and frustration. And we’re taking the piss a bit more outta life. Maybe we’re going, like, ‘Everything is fucked,’ but we also make fun of it, too.”

That duality is certainly present on Comfort to Me. Made during Melbourne’s extensive lockdown (the longest in the world, at 262 days), it was the band’s first record where they took their time rather than slapdashing their songs together in lightning-quick writing sessions. With more time on her hands than usual, Taylor had become a voracious reader. Coupled with living through ongoing political strife, a global pandemic, and the realities of climate change, including the devastating Australian bushfire season of 2020-2021, her lyrics turned more thoughtful than ever—and more angry.

“Basically the world is fucked, and I don’t really feel like I have any control over that,” she says. “I believe that with a platform I can try to educate people, but I'm not educated enough myself to be speaking real confidently about what’s going on. With songs like ‘Capital,’ I’m kind of trying to show the perspective that politics is really hard to understand if you weren’t raised around it. And even the Australian political system is really hard to figure out on your own accord.”

But inevitably, politics are intertwined with the music business. In December 2021, a group of Palestine solidarity organizations called for a boycott of the Sydney Festival, a three-week-long multidisciplinary arts event held annually in Australia’s largest city. The festival had received a $20,000 sponsorship from the Israeli Embassy for a dance performance by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin. More than 20 acts pulled out of the festival’s 133 events in response. Amyl and the Sniffers didn't, and played the festival’s opening night.

Criticism of the band’s involvement in the festival has continued on social media for months. It begged the question—what was the band’s rationale for playing the show? Would they make the same choice now, in retrospect? CREEM reached out for comment, but their PR said the band was too slammed to talk about anything more (Amyl, call us!).

Back during our conversation, Taylor left no mystery on her approach to songwriting. “If you’re gathering information and stories from people from all over,” says the singer, “then you could have a truly amazing scope of the world instead of just one perspective, whether that be solely pop or solely punk, if we’re talking about genre. But the more perspective on anything, the better.” When speaking about what inspires her, Taylor mentions Dolly Parton, Cardi B, and Ice Cube as much as any rock or punk artist. “I like personality types,” she says. “I guess that’s what I'm attracted to about Dolly and Cardi and Ice Cube. But in terms of music, I love heavy music. Sometimes I think, ‘Oh, fuck—we sound like a fucking pop-punk band,’ and that makes me feel like a fucking idiot. But mainly when I see bands like C.O.F.F.I.N. or Ceremony, who I saw the other day, I’m like, ‘This is fucking sick!”’

Pop-punk fears aside, the focus right now is on connecting with fans in person after such a long time apart. “I think the old rules don’t apply because it was such a weird time,” Taylor says. “So [touring on] 2021’s album in 2022 still seems like the right thing to do because we haven’t been able to play it in front of audiences, and we’re a live band. So, you know, we’re just gonna spend this year touring and celebrating the album, and playing it for people.”

And maybe grab a nap while you’re at it?