Amyl And The Sniffers
Cartoon Darkness

I left my heart somewhere between the bits of "Giddy Up" and "Big Attraction" and I always go back to search for a fragment.

And yet, how brave (foolhardy? reckless?) are "these" Amyl And The Sniffers who, for three years, since "Comfort To Me", have started to veer away from the main road paved with hard punk’n’roll from pubs.

"Let's go this way, come on"

"Where does it lead?"

"Hell if I know, we'll see along the way. You coming?"

"Sure, I'll come"

In the end, going somewhere is always better than going nowhere, as it's well known that only fools go nowhere.

In the end, we arrived at "Cartoon Darkness", the difficult third album. The one of the transition to a place that can't be seen.

"Never heard them before, but I can't afford three albums, two at most."

"Then skip this one and dive into the first two."

So, "Cartoon Darkness" has a couple of flaws.

The first is the sentiment that erupts from several grooves, a sense at times of assertion, at times of rebellion, to say the least childish: "I'm a rocker, you're an idiot", "I bust my ass on stages worldwide, you're a critic jerking off in front of a typewriter", "my friends and I are having fun, you and your friends get lost".

"She sang the same things 10 years ago, basically the same"

"Yes, but 10 years ago, she did her records by herself in the basement and, as much as it drips fat, she sold about twenty copies, now she's recording for a major."

Someone wrote that the medium is the message, I don't know how and why, but I hope it conveys the sense of what I mean.

The second is that I don't quite understand where Amy, Bryce, Declan, and Gus are heading. Inside "Cartoon Darkness" there's a bit of everything or, at least, I hear a bit of everything: from the Birdman and a great decade of Australian rock to the Motorhead up to Dire Straits and Rockets (!), if only for a few seconds, but I hear them. Maybe that's why on October 25th thousands of reviews appeared online, from Kerrang to the Financial Times, all moderately praising. It sounds strange to me, it's my "problem".

"Since when is stylistic variety a bad thing?"

"For me, the greatest album in history is 'London Calling', imagine that"

The thing is that in '79, the Clash had 19 masterpieces in their hands, each different from the other, they summed them up, and the result is a monolith of beauty and compactness; the Sniffers, today, dream of 13 masterpieces and, as the critic with the typewriter writes, the album suffers from an underlying penalizing heterogeneity.

"But is it bad?"

"Are you kidding? It's a great album"

Because these 13 songs are not bad at all, they're not masterpieces, but they deserve a lot.

Look, if they had released them in two EPs and two 45s, they would have stood out much better.

"Do you know how EPs and singles sell compared to albums?"

"Right, now they're recording for a major"

However, in a better place, the story of the two EPs and two singles could have worked.

In the first EP, you had the pounding, rowdy, and carefree Sniffers, those of "It's Mine" and "Motorbike Song", of "Pigs" and "Do It Do It": I'd have placed it there near "Giddy Up" and "Big Attractions" and surely I'd have left another little piece of my heart there. For Kerrang, it would have been one of the fundamental records of the decade.

Then came the 45, with "Jerkin'" on side A and "U Should Not Be Doing That" on side B, the cord linking Amy and the boys to the beautiful "Hertz", now a story of three years ago. This would have pleased those at Pitchfork and Ondarock, and even Blow Up. It would be worth investing 10 euros to read what Guglielmi would write about it.

Another EP, the maturity of the Sniffers: how beautiful is "Chewing Gum", the thought runs to "Angel" on the debut, I think about how much better Amy and the others "sound"; "Big Dreams" and "Bailing On Me", like "Knifey" on "Comfort To Me", I think maturity is also repeating that this crap is killing you, and you want to leave before you drop dead, but there is a way and a way to say it and really do it, even if it's whistling once you're out; it closes with "Going Somewhere", encapsulating (almost) the whole essence of "these" Sniffers, and when Amy comes out saying that the most fragrant rose grows from the cow's dung, for some reason it seems like I've heard this story before. Roughly, this would snatch five stars in the Guardian.

The second single remained and it ended with "Tiny Bikini" and "Me And The Girls": "what is this crap?" exclaimed Greil Marcus upon hearing Bob Dylan's "Self Portrait", "what is this crap?" I exclaimed at the first hearing of "Sandinista". Give it time, in a couple of years, they'll be my favorite Sniffers. They would have been the favorites of the Financial Times, who knows what they'll write about it in a few weeks in the 24 Ore.

Be that as it may, Amy, I love you dearly, and Bryce, Declan, and Gus, even Cal.

I'm not a critic, I don't have the typewriter, and this, of course, is not a review.