For their next trick, Amyl And The Sniffers are going country.
The Australian punk rock act took a brief moment out of their current tour of Continental Europe to alert fans to their next move.
“A film is coming to you soon about Amyl And The Sniffers doing country covers of our own songs,” reads a post on their socials.
Longtime collaborator John Angus Stewart, who has created several music videos for Amyl, including “You’re a Star,” a collaboration with Fred Again; “Jerkin’,” “U Should Not Be Doing That,” and “Hertz,” which was nominated for best video at the 2022 ARIA Awards, will helm the country film project. Chris Chang and Jason Baum will produce.
The project isn’t a bolt out of the blue. Singer Amy Taylor has previously made it clear that a country record was high on her to-do list.
“We’ve had three really successful punk and rock albums, but I’d love to make an Aussie country album,” she told Rolling Stone Australia/New Zealand last year. “Chad Morgan, Slim Dusty, that kind of stuff. You know, just shake shit up. If you don’t think about it and talk about it, again, we would just end up touring until we drop dead, basically.”
Those albums include the band’s self-titled debut from 2019, and 2021’s sophomore effort Comfort to Me, which peaked at No. 2 on the ARIA Chart and won for best independent punk album or EP at the 2022 AIR Awards.
Amyl’s most recent album, 2024’s Cartoon Darkness, also peaked at No. 2 on the all-genres ARIA Chart, cracked the Billboard 200 (peaking at No. 196) and cleaned up on the awards circuit, including ARIAs for album of the year, best group, and best rock album, and a slew of APRA Music Awards, including the peer-voted APRA song of the year on two consecutive years.
Also, Cartoon Darkness cut “U Should Not Be Doing That” snagged a nomination at the 68th Grammy Awards, the band’s first, in the category for best rock performance.
Amyl And The Sniffers’ tour dates continue this Friday, Aug. 7 with a performance at Hot in the City at Trieste Estate, followed by festival spots in Poland, Croatia, Norway, Portugal, Denmark, Spain, the United Kingdom, Ireland and France. U.S. dates get underway from Oct. 1 in Dallas, TX.
