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.