Amyl and the Sniffers review – a blizzard from Oz

Electric Ballroom, London
Channelling singer Amy Taylor’s rage and joyous abandon, the Australian punk band bring their second album to glorious fighting life

We are living through what often feel like end times for genre. If recording studios had windows, rulebooks would be flying out of them constantly, endangering passersby. Crossover smashes such as Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road have been obvious manifestations of this shift. But colouring inside the stylistic lines has been in decline for a while. Few, it seems, want a creative life without hyphens or slashes.

Into this free for all come Amyl and the Sniffers, a punk rock band who do one simple thing very well. This is time-honoured stuff – bass judder, scorched earth guitar, pummelling from the kit – but Amyl and the Sniffers take what could be a played-out sound somewhere unexpected, channelling singer Amy Taylor’s rage and joyous abandon. Rippling with sinew and seemingly limitless life force, Taylor is like a boxer crossed with a wood sprite; sometimes it’s a little like listening to Poly Styrene fronting Motörhead.

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZvdFbf