Amyl and the Sniffers

To say Aussie trash punks Amyl and The Sniffers haven’t exactly charted a traditional course towards their current position would be a slight understatement. Having written their first ramshackle EP Big Attraction in one 12-hour shift before releasing it as a double EP through Damaged Goods in tandem with their second; Giddy Up, the band’s incendiary live shows quickly propelled them beyond their Aussie base to non-stop world touring. With a name part derived from vocalist Amy Taylor’s name, and part homage to inhalation of solvents, musically speaking they are the exact embodiment of their moniker - around 120 seconds of furious enjoyment, followed by a vague headache and a need to indulge further. Having been described as everything from pub-rock to bogan-punk (and of course, the obvious influence of 70’s Australian Rock is not to be understated), I feel a more apt depiction would be imagining the juvenile crudeness of the Ramones informed by [70’s Australian Subculture] Sharpies, mullets and rural Australia.

Still in the early days of a marathon 5-month tour from Europe to the US and back again (including a UK tour with Slaves), Amyl and the Sniffers have both the energy – and in their frontperson – the starpower – to take over the world gig by gig. Now with an album on its way, produced by Joey Walker and Eric Moore [King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard], the world of Amyl and the Sniffers is only going to get more exciting.

Q: As we speak, you’re currently in Norway, at the beginning of a massive tour. How’s it been so far?

A: Pretty good actually – we’ve only been going since last Friday, and it’s been pretty cruisey, with no long drives yet. We’re doing a couple of festivals at the moment, but then moving onto the headline stuff later.

Q: How’s the reception to you guys been, given that you’re pretty much on the other side of the world from home?

A: Yeah good! We’ve always been hit up by, like, German guys, asking us to come over. This is really when we were just starting out, playing to like 50 guys in Melbourne, which is pretty crazy. We’ve always had a decent following over here really. We played in Moscow, and we had no idea whether anyone at all would turn up, whether we had any fans in Russia- but it went fine. So long as people are jumping up and down wherever, we’re doing ok. Same with Copenhagen the other night- we had to put a bit more effort into it to get the crowd moving, but we got there in the end.

Q: You mention playing to 50 guys a night in Melbourne - do you find it strange that it’s you guys that are really blowing up on the international stage? Given the amount of maybe more accessible music coming out of Aus at the moment?

A: I don’t think so. A lot of the really good bands in Melbourne are sort of just content playing to bigger crowds in Melbourne, and I think for us we put in a lot of hard work- and even though we’re still a really young band, we realised early on that if we really pushed it, we could end up playing overseas. Having said that, sometimes I do have to pinch myself that us, as a band that never really intended to even play a gig, is now playing in places like the US and Istanbul!

Q: Reading through separate interviews you guys have done, it seems like you share a focus around not trying to affect pretension, with emphasis around having a genuine good time. Is there something in this particular mindset that you think has really clicked with people?

A: I think it’s more about the way we play the music rather than the music we play; do you know what I mean? We really put a lot more focus into the way we perform and how the live shows go, rather than a recording process. The more catchy songs we’ve come up with have just been flukes, plucked out of the air.

Q: You’re really building a reputation as being a crazy live band- is that intensity difficult to translate into recording?

A: Yeah, lately. The first recordings we did, the ones that are out now, are just made with whatever we had access to, a $50 drumkit and the bass going straight into the laptop, all written and recorded in one bedroom. Now that we’re more accomplished, we have more idea what we want to sound like, and the direction we want to take it in, so trying to do that is a bit harder. I think we have the idea we’re quite DIY, and obviously our fans now are into that that stuff, so we don’t want to ‘sell out’ or whatever. We try and keep it fresh by like trying to get each song done in 3 takes and then move on to the next one, then maybe come back to the previous one later.

Q: You’ve got an album in the works - could you tell us a bit about the process that went into creating it?

A: We wrote the whole album in the basement me and our bassist were living in. We hadn’t really written anything for a year, so we tried to just stick in every idea we’d had for twelve months and that morning. We’ve been touring non-stop since then pretty much, so we’ve been trying to find random places to record as we move around the world. Especially in front of the King Gizzard guys, at first I personally was quite scared – because there’s a difference to playing in front of one person in the studio and playing live, where it’s all about the beer, hanging off the ceiling and making weird noises. But when playing to one person, they’re just judging you on your music, which is quite intimidating.

Q: How has recording your album in make-do spots around the world whilst touring influenced the way the album sounds?

A: You see how you have geographic genres? Like Seattle grunge or New-York hardcore? Our music is very Australian and Melbourne oriented, so when recording in different spots we try and shut out wherever we are and just try and put as much Australian into the album as possible.

Q: Although you say you’re quite Melbourne focused, and there are the nods to Australian culture here and there through your songs. Still though, there is an element of more ‘classic’ punk. what made you want to play the style of music you do?

A: I think it’s just that classic thing that our drummer is a really good bassist, and he was teaching himself drums, and I was that classic tragic guitarist who couldn’t really play. As for Amy, she was really good at like freestyle rapping at parties and stuff - we didn’t know she had this power to be this amazing frontperson. It was more just “I’m trying to sound like the bands I like- but I’m not as good as them, so it just came out as punk.”

Q: How do you avoid going completely insane when you’re on tour for months on end?

A: As an Australian band, you learn it on the national tours. From Melbourne to Sydney is about 10 hours, and then another 10 hours to Brisbane. So you spend a lot of time in a car with your bandmates, who are all really hungover and doing really bad farts. It’s hard, but it’s something you learn. You learn to bite your tongue, let someone’s leg sit against you, carry their kit, whatever. I guess that’s what breaks up a lot of bands- the farts.

Words by Dan Pare | Illustration by Anna Rupprecht