Amyl & The Sniffers’ third album Cartoon Darkness released this Friday, and it’s an explosion of high energetic, fiercely uncensored fun. One of the singles, ‘Chewing Gum’, launched as BBC Radio 1’s Hottest Record – so listeners already knew the album was guaranteed to be a hit.
Despite the intrinsic need to jump up and down that Amyl and the Sniffers’ tracks creates, Cartoon Darkness covers some pretty serious topics about modern-day horrors. Lead singer Amy Taylor says: “Cartoon Darkness is about [the] climate crisis, war, AI, tiptoeing on the eggshells of politics, and people feeling like they're helping by having a voice online when we’re all just feeding the data beast of Big Tech, our modern-day god. It’s about the fact that our generation is spoon-fed information. We look like adults, but we’re children forever cocooned in a shell. We’re all passively gulping up distractions that don’t even cause pleasure, sensation or joy, they just cause numbness.”
The album opens with a shocker of a line – “You’re a dumb c***” – and an X-rated music video. Swearing has always been a staple of the band’s style (one 2019 song was named ‘GFY’, standing for Go F*** Yourself), but opening track ‘Jerker’ takes this to heights rarely seen before. The track is a comically explicit explosion of insults, reminding old listeners of their historically comedic touch (see: ‘Security’, a track from the perspective of a drunk girl trying to convince the bouncer she isn’t that drunk).
However, Amyl & The Sniffers aren’t all laughs and rage – ‘Tiny Bikini’ is contemplative in a way that feels completely new. Taylor sings in a babydoll voice about her “tiny-eeny-weeny bikini”, seemingly referencing her onstage costumes. She questions how much control she really has over her own performance: “I know it's technically my space, but / I'm the only one here in a bikini”. The band has discussed hard-hitting topics before, but the vulnerability and nuance that ‘Tiny Bikini’ brings is something special.
The track isn’t the only one that deviates from the usual; ‘Bailing on Me’ has an acoustic guitar. Yes, you heard that right – abrasive and bustling punk band Amyl and the Sniffers are using an acoustic guitar on their album. The track itself has the same sharp electric guitar riffs and catchy lyrics, but signals a shift towards something new from the band.
Reviewing this album without mentioning ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ would feel incomplete. There’s usually a standout track on any album, and this is the one. Taylor sings about those who shame showing some skin, and the lyrics are direct enough that they should speak for themselves:
“I was in LA, shaking my s*** / While you were down in Melbourne saying, "F*** that b****” / You were in New York, getting s*** on / And they were down in Melbourne saying, "You should not be doing that"”
It’s bold and catchy and has all the charm that Amyl and the Sniffers became famous from in the first place. Another standout track is the single ‘Big Dream’, which speeds up throughout and tells a tale of desperate ambition. The chorus is made to be sung live, with a catchy “Hey / Ooh!” interjection in each line – while sung casually, it’ll almost definitely be screamed back by audiences in their upcoming tour.
‘Motorbike Song’ has a frankly legendary electric guitar line throughout, and the track is quintessential Amyl; high energy and filled with drums, electric guitar and shouting vocals. The line “Are you sure that you’re living free? Cuz every day you work and sleep” hearkens back to the background politics within the themes of each song – though this more serious element feels fairly secondary to the stylistic elements of punk.
Amy Taylor mentions similar themes in her discussion of the track ‘Chewing Gum’. “Life is work, life is not free, we can never work enough because the end goal doesn't exist, so all we can do is choose to be wrong.”, she says of the song. The line “I was doing the dishes, cleaning, but I never ate” speaks to this idea of fruitless effort, and feels like one of Amyl and the Sniffers’ best lyrics yet.
Overall, the album is a collection of ponderings from the band over the last few years – about branching out, about working life, and about rising fame. It works, introducing fresh elements while still preserving the original Amyl and the Sniffers style. Cartoon Darkness is, despite its title, bright with energy and all too real with its topics. It’s safe to say the band has hit success once again.
The album is available on CD, black LP and indie ‘Bittersweet Moondance Edition’ LP, as well as a limited edition glow in the dark vinyl with alternate artwork. The band will be heading out on a UK / EURO tour in November and will be main support for Fontaines D.C. at Finsbury Park on July 5, 2025.
