Above: Frontgirl Amy Taylor on the Speakers Corner stage. Featured image-Amyl Amd The Sniffers. Photo credit: Jacquie Manning.
The Sydney Festival continues for another year without the Hyde Park Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent of years gone by. The excellent Speakers Corner pop-up CBD music venue on the corner of College and William Streets is quite amazing by way of replacement.
Emerging beyond the forecourt of St Marys is the fully alfresco seated audience area before a stage flanked by two large screens.
This venue’s closeness to the cathedral in no way muted the provocative modern-retro punk-rock cheekiness of Amyl and the Sniffers’ frontgirl Amy Taylor.
Taylor began the concert by urging us to ‘take a seat’ in this a changed gig dynamic for the festival friendly band. This seated audience rock gig with a difference began with Taylor’s unique, unparalleled shouting through the single ‘Guided By Angels’ from this year’s album release Comfort To Me.
This track’s lyrics ‘…energy-it’s my currency…’ were a case of truer words never spoken, and a perfect caption for the impressive on-stage friction. The bikini top and shorts-clad Taylor delivered a powerhouse performance at this event, with unflagging super-tough vocals and explosive stage presence.
Above: Guitarist Declan Martens faces off with AmTaylor. Photo credit Jacquie Manning.
Taylor’s hectic arsenal of gesture with long mullet swishing about while her cleverly constructed messages reached us was a welcome boost in these tentative times. Old and newer fans alike were quickly bought and sold and boldly bought again by such currency from the band’s performance of their subtlety-sabotaged messages.
Borrowing from the punk-rock legacy and a solid history of don’t-mess-me-around Aussie rock-chicks, Taylor was joined by fellow
Melbourne musicians Fergus Romer on bass, Declan Martens on lead and drummer Bryce Wilson. They quickly set the Speaker’s Corner venue on feverish fire.
Above: Vocalist Amy Taylor and Amyl And The Sniffers drummer Bryce Wilson. Photo Credit Jacquie Manning.
This band, recent survivors of rocketing to fame as a homegrown Aussie group and a re-entry into the public eye following pandemic lockdowns demanded ruthlessly from the gig’s outset thatwe were part of this flat-out celebration of life and their creativity. As the rain held out nothing much else was given a chance to dampen this band’s lust to perform live either.
Full of tracks from the popular Comfort To Me album, the set reinforced Amyl And The Sniffers’ ballsy social commentary as well as their humble-hellfire sharing of struggle and self confidence.
Taylor’s brief, brutal dialogue with us between songs brought us even closer into the honesty of her slap-in-the-face punked-out streetwise advice.
In the venue teaming with hard working Festival staff and security guards the track ‘Security’ part way through continued the tell-it-how-it-is-and-be-your-f**king self shout out to us, needed this year more than ever.
As Taylor dug in and threw out the her trademark blunt wisdom to the crowd dancing in their seats, spirits of cancelled music festivals past danced around the venue looking for the love that was here vibing in bucketloads.
Above: Amy Taylor on the well-lit Speakers Corner stage. Photo credit: Jacquie Manning.
Tracks like ‘Hertz’, ‘Freaks to the Front’ and ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ worked their down-to-earth magic of empowerment, decorated by Martens’ slick solo-ing on lead.
Especially effective in this compact festival-like Festival space was the chilling intimacy of darker tracks like ‘Knifey’ (‘one for the girls-it’s rough out there’- as prefaced by Taylor), the popular edgy strength of ‘No More Tears’ as well as ‘Choices’.
This gig really wet the head of the Speakers Corner stage as we huffed up the current, growing and well deserved success of Amyl And The Sniffers. Such success is smashing it up outside their local Melbourne and testing our comfort zones. We loved and will continue to love their talent to create and perform rowdy moments full of richly challenging lyrics and a wild celebration of live music.
As live music continues to matter, we soak or sniff up the words of one stage chat from the inimitable Taylor: ‘I think 2022 will be a good year….or it will be f**cked!’. Truer words were never spoken, being also as true as the popular mini mantras of the band’s bulkhead of hits we all had a ball hearing live.