AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS

Comfort To Me Second serve from Melbourne punks.

For a band living the Australian pub-punk dream of ripping up stages worldwide to breathless acclaim on the back of their award-winning self-titled debut album in 2019, being suddenly confined to a shared house for Covid naturally turned them into caged animals.

Their second album — more highly flammable melodic buzz-punk, now with added flecks of Stranglers atmospherics — doesn’t find bawler Amy Taylor joining Ian Brown’s league of anti-lockdown rockers, but instead projecting her feelings about restriction and lack of control on to the wider social canvas. Choices is a battlecry of self-determination in a world of online groupthink (‘I can make my own choices!’), Capital berates humanity’s slavery to capitalism, Don’t Fence Me In kicks back against stylistic pigeonholes, and the atmos-punk Knifey makes a blade-toting stand for women who just want to get home safely. It’s a record fired by post-pandemic anticipation though: Freaks To The Front sounds like the Ramones leading the charge into the Roaring Twenties, Security is a retro-rock plea to just be let into a pub.