Entertainment
Amyl and the Sniffers move to L.A. and get a whiff of punk glory on 'Cartoon Darkness'
Amyl and the Sniffers have always appreciated any small bit of good news. Even when the Australian punk rock quartet recorded its charmingly raw debut EP, “Giddy Up,” in a single night and released it online in 2016, the initial 100 streams were reward enough.
“To us, that was massive,” says singer Amy Taylor, aka “Amyl,” with a grin. “We get one play on local community radio and we’re like, ‘We’re massive. We’ve made it.’ You get a support slot in a 200-capacity room, we’re like, ‘We’ve made it.’ It’s really hard to get a perspective bigger than what we can see. … We’re very much appreciative of what’s happening rather than thinking about what might happen so much.”
Amyl and the Sniffers feel the same way about their third album, “Cartoon Darkness,” released Oct. 25, a potent collection of snarly, ecstatic rock tunes and the occasional ballad. Its first single, “U Should Not Be Doing That,” quickly earned millions of Spotify listens and heavy rotation for its music video (1.6 million views on YouTube alone), showing Taylor and a new companion stomping across Los Angeles as she sings lyrics of defiant self-worth.
“I am trying my best to get it on,” she sings, in her distinctively combative, percussive, very Australian voice. “Not everybody makes it out alive / When they are young.”
Fans are drawn to the Sniffers’ sound and attitude, which taps into the rowdy spirit of first-generation punk rock, along with a feisty, euphoric blond singer moving nonstop and usually dressed in a bikini top and shorts. The album comes two months after the band opened for a Foo Fighters concert at BMO Stadium in August, followed days later by two sold-out shows at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood.
“Right now I think they’re the best rock band on the planet,” says Nick Launay, producer of “Cartoon Darkness,” in a phone interview. Launay has frequently worked with modern rock acts such as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Idles and Nick Cave, but his career stretches back to the early U.K. punk and postpunk scenes.
“If they had been around in the ’70s, they would’ve been just as important back then,” he declares of the Sniffers. “They would’ve given everybody a run for their money.”
Launay says his mission in the studio was simply to fully capture the urgency of the band’s live shows. Aside from that, the new album’s 13 songs show a noticeable evolution to their punk rock sound, which remains connected to their early pub-crawling days without getting in the way of growth and the increasing power of their delivery.
“I think we’ve always been confident,” says Taylor. “It’s just that we’ve gotten better. Even when we weren’t very good, we were confident, but now the skills are slowly catching up to the confidence.”
Amyl and the Sniffers perform the second of two sold-out nights at the Fonda Theater in Hollywood, Calif. (Left to right) Guitarist Declan Mehrtens, singer Amy Taylor, and drummer Bryce Wilson.
(Steve Appleford/Steve Appleford)
The Aussie quartet is gathered on a recent afternoon around a Griffith Park picnic table, where a small herd of little kids makes a racket on the grass nearby. Taylor is dressed in a short black leather jacket, matching shorts and knee-high boots with stiletto heels. Pinned to her chest is a 2 Live Crew button.
Her three male bandmates are stylishly scruffy and tattooed rockers: guitarist Declan Mehrtens, drummer Bryce Wilson and bassist Gus Romer. Earlier this year, Taylor and Mehrtens moved to the U.S. and found places in L.A., while the others theoretically remain based in Melbourne. That kind of distance between bandmates might seem like a problem for a thriving rock act, but they’ve rarely been apart this last year, with only short breaks between recording the album, shooting music videos, a U.S. tour, then linking up again in Australia.
“We’ve been together this year pretty much every day, it feels like,” says Wilson.
Taylor adds, “We see each other all the time. It’s such an international project, we don’t live anywhere anyway.” She turns to Romer and Wilson and adds, “They might live in Australia, but it’s just where they store their crap.”
Los Angeles already feels very much like home to the singer and the guitarist. Mehrtens decided to move here after enjoying a Dodgers-Padres postseason game, and Taylor has befriended local rockers including Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Arrow De Wilde of Starcrawler.
They are back on the road for a European tour that started Nov. 3 in Dublin and return for a North American tour in the spring.
Their work with producer Launay began by recording two songs last year at Sunset Sound, including “U Should Not Be Doing That,” released as a single in May. In the lyrics, Taylor pushes back against the naysayers that she says the band has faced at every step.
“At the end of the day, nothing’s really stopped me, and nothing probably will because I like doing it more than I care about what other people think,” Taylor says with casual defiance.
The new album opens with the driving noisy rock riffing of “Jerkin,’” as Taylor pushes back against haters with boasts and joyous profanity: “Last time I checked, I got success / Cuz the losers are online and they are obsessed / Typin’.”
There’s also the crazed racket of “Motorbike Song” and the alluring ballad “Big Dreams,” written on acoustic guitar and matched in tone by a wistful music video directed by longtime collaborator John Angus Stewart. The clip has each of the band members on the back of motorcycles cruising across a wide-open desert landscape.
Guitarist Declan Mehrtens of Amyl and the Sniffers poses for a portrait a the Old Zoo in Griffith Park, in Los Angeles.
(Steve Appleford)
Out front, Taylor sings from the back of a chopper, her vocals understated and almost resigned as she laments for those who feel stuck in place: “It isn’t easy when the town’s full of broken hearts / Can you be holding on any tighter? / Just take a breath and get out of this place / I know you can just get yourself together.”
There are hip-hop influences too, says Taylor. “Beastie Boys was big on this album,” she explains, “just ’cause they’re awesome and their phrasing is cool and we listen to a lot of them.”
Along the way, their producer has learned how to interpret what he calls “Amy Language.”
As one example, while Launay was mixing tracks for 2021’s “Comfort to Me,” Taylor was unhappy with the sound of “Hertz,” calling the song mix “too Lambo” — short for the luxury sports car Lamborghini. So she sent Launay a picture of a Subaru doing doughnuts on the asphalt as a better example to follow. “Like that,” she wrote him, “only driven by a hot Aussie chick … but she’s a politician.”
“Even though that sounds like crazy instructions, I knew exactly what she meant,” says Launay, who lived in Australia for a decade. “I mixed it rawer, wilder, sexier and put a couple of clever bits in there, sent it to her, and she goes, ‘Yep, that’s it. Next!’”
Taylor grew up there in Mullumbimby, a small hamlet in northern New South Wales, and a town she describes as “dirty hippie, no shoes, like antivax, organic food.” Rapper Iggy Azalea is also from there, and left for the U.S. at age 16. Azalea’s mother had a cleaning business that Taylor’s mom worked for briefly.
The band began in a house shared by Taylor, Mehrtens, Wilson and former member Calum Newton in beachside St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne. Taylor worked at a supermarket and had purchased a used drumkit for about $50 that she kept in her bedroom.
Singer Amy Taylor of Amyl and the Sniffers poses for a portrait a the Old Zoo in Griffith Park, in Los Angeles.
(Steve Appleford)
“We went to live music all the time — five, six nights a week,” says Taylor of their nightlife habits. “There’d be lots of house parties and bands would play in the backyard. I would freestyle rap a lot at the parties. It was my party trick. If it was a house show, I’d be like, can I get on the mic? Some bands were playing and I’d just like yelp words.”
That impulse evolved into forming a band. “We kind of wanted to sound like a B-52’s when we started,” says Taylor. “But we just couldn’t play good enough. So we sounded like this. But we liked the aggression of the music.”
As a new group, they were part of an Aussie garage-band scene with contemporaries like the Cosmic Psychos, Drunk Mums and Dumb Punts. At those first club performances, it was largely an older crowd turning out, no doubt connecting the Sniffers’ racket to their memories of early punk rock. “When we first started it’d probably be like 80% men over 50 — like looking out at a bloody dozen eggs,” she says of the gathering of gray and bald heads.
Their crowds have evolved a lot since then. During their two-night run at the Fonda, the dance floor was filled with young fans whom Taylor happily describes as “young frothers, just frothing about life, like rabid frothing,” she says with a laugh. “They’re excited and they’re young and they’re drinking for the first time and they’ve got mullets and they’re like, ‘Yeah!’ Our crowd’s usually very excitable people in the same way that I’m excitable.”
One more thing has changed: For most of the band’s career, Mehrtens spelled his last name as “Martens,” partly for simplicity’s sake but also because he wore Doc Martens boots. He adopted “Dec Martens” as a kind of punk rock alias, like the Germs’ Darby Crash or Pat Smear. He’s reverted to the correct spelling as a sign that the band has lasted well beyond its initial existence as a lark among friends.
“When I did that, I didn’t know that we were going to be getting three, four … albums in,” he says of his earlier nickname. “Now there’s visas involved, and I want people to know that it’s me who’s on the album.”
Being in the band also has changed Taylor’s perspective on many things. Now that she’s an accomplished lyricist, she pays more attention to the written word.
“I hated books. Now I love reading books and read all the time,” the singer says, then adds with a laugh, “Before, my God, I only had like 20 words in my vocabulary. Now I’ve got at least a hundred, so that helps. I love the riddles of phrasing and trying to get phrasing in a different kind of puzzle-y way.”
Romer jumps in, adding with a grin, “Sometimes she has a new big word and I’m very impressed.”
Comedy is a matter of taste and preference — it’s a deeply personal thing. Which makes it hard for a critic to give a blanket assessment of a specific kind of comedy, especially if it didn’t work for them, but clearly worked for others (the laughter or lack thereof is the indication). “It’s not funny,” the critic says, “well I had fun,” someone else can reply, and then we’re at an impasse.
Which is the dilemma one finds oneself in with “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass,” a very strange and shaggy Hollywood satire of sorts from David Wain and The State crew, still riding the goodwill of “Wet Hot American Summer” after all these years. If only this were as funny.
“Gail Daughtry” lives in the same world as that iconic summer camp spoof, as well as Wain’s 2014 rom-com parody, “They Came Together,” in that he’s playing with genre convention and expectation, taking well-known norms to the goofiest extremes. But those films hewed more closely to their respective genres, while “Gail Daughtry” is totally scattered, combining crime and spy movie tropes with a fish-out-of-water comedy and a Hollywood send-up. It has far too many ideas for its own good, and yet no ideas that are good enough to sustain this bizarre curio of a comedy.
What’s ironic is that one of the problems driving this wacky plot forward is the characters have to come up with a movie idea to pitch to star Jon Hamm (playing himself of course), leading them to do some pretty inane and shockingly violent things. It’s almost as if Wain and co-writer and co-star Ken Marino had no idea for a movie, then baked their search for an idea into their script, and then turned it into a madcap adventure about a woman on a quest to have sex with Jon Hamm. What an ouroboros!
OK, about the sex quest. Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch) is a chipper hairdresser from Kansas born without the part of the brain that recognizes sarcasm or irony. She’s a cheerful, Pollyanna-ish naïf whose literal-mindedness is almost as extreme as Amelia Bedelia. Her childhood sweetheart and fiancé Tom (Michael Cassidy) is the same. She tells him about the concept of the “celebrity sex pass” as a joke, and he promptly boinks Jennifer Aniston at local book reading.
(Nitpicky aside: why didn’t they use the common nomenclature “hall pass”? Is it copyrighted? “Celebrity sex pass” is clunky and sounds like an off-brand version of the well-known slang.)
That infidelity crisis is how Gail ends up in Los Angeles determined to bang Hamm, collecting a motley crew of similarly clueless helpers along the way. There’s her best friend Otto (Miles Guttierez-Riley), her salon bestie; Caleb (Ben Wang), an overly ambitious intern at Creative Artists Agency; Vince (Marino), a screenwriter turned paparazzo with a heart of gold; and John Slattery, as John Slattery, down on his luck. An accidental briefcase swap has a pair of thugs on their tail, in a forgettable and underdeveloped B-plot.
With a parade of celebrity cameos and collaborators in bit parts, “Gail Daughtry” at times feels like an excuse for Wain and co. to make something at home with all of their friends. Fair enough, it’s great to see all these people employed, but what about what we’re watching? Behold, the Los Angeles of the middle-aged working comedian: the CAA lobby, the Chateau Marmont, Griffith Park, etc. And the plot is as half-baked as the pitch they present to Hamm.
What’s actually interesting about this comedy is the distinct streak of despair and even resentment that reveals itself at the climax, a feeling of helplessness and uselessness. Everyone’s been striving to make it in this crazy town: the intern, the actor, the paparazzo. But not even Jon Hamm can help them get a movie made; even he feels inherently powerless. There’s an unexplored anxiety vibrating there that feels the most thematically fruitful, about what it means, some 25 years after bursting onto the scene with a generation-defining comedy, about maintaining the work, the drive, a sense of purpose, after years of strikes, and in the face of a constricting industry. Do they still have it? Is the dream still alive?
Maybe that’s why Wain and Marino need to invent a dreamer stand-in with Gail, a guileless eternal optimist who knows nothing of the craven Los Angeles and accepts everything at face value (though she is filled with a scary bit of rage too). She might behave like she has a head injury, but she’s going to achieve her goal, dammit. “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” might not be as funny as “Wet Hot American Summer” (for this critic), but reframed, it serves as a fascinating status update on life in La La Land for this troupe.
‘Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass’
2 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for sexual content, violence/bloody images and language)
Running time: 1:33
How to watch: In theaters July 10
Entertainment
Emily Ratajkowski’s viral essay on sex life as a single mom scores her a seven-figure book deal
Emily Ratajkowski’s viral essay detailing her sex life as a single mom just landed her a seven-figure book deal.
According to Page Six, the model’s essay in the Cut had publishers champing at the bit in a 12-way bidding war that culminated in the hefty pay day. Editor Helen Rouner at Penguin Press — who also edited Lauren Christensen’s memoir “Firstborn” and Michael W. Clune’s novel “Pan” — reportedly landed the deal.
Penguin Press did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment Friday.
Publishers Marketplace announced the forthcoming memoir, describing it as “an examination of modern female identity through the story of the author’s own efforts as a newly single mother in New York City to discover what really constitutes a good life for a woman.”
The essay, which dropped a month ago and quickly broke the internet, drops the veil on EmRata’s sexual adventures (or maybe misadventures) since she and her former husband, Sebastian Bear-McClard, split in 2022.
“It was a violent transition into a new reality of screaming baby on my aching tit and ring on my swollen finger,” Ratajkowski writes of new motherhood. “And then, in a time period that felt both instant and excruciatingly slow, my marriage collapsed. Six months after my son was born, my husband and I stopped having sex. Less than a year later, we separated.”
In the missive, the model interrogates her sexuality — is she a Madonna or a whore? — while untangling bigger questions around gender, power and self-actualization. If Carrie Bradshaw wrote about “Sex and the City,” then Ratajkowski is writing about sex, the city and single motherhood. And naturally, her fleeting paramours have vague monikers: “Vegan Graffiti Artist,” “Spanish Gen-Zer” and “Son of a Billionaire.”
“And then there was the Elder Millennial: obsessed with dental hygiene, psychedelics, and dirty talk,” she writes. “He had approached the subject coyly at first, like it was something he was kind of embarrassed about — the way a kid will test you to see if you’ll talk to them about their dorky obsession of the moment. Do you like Godzilla? What about Star Wars?”
Would-be sleuths with Ratajkowski’s essay and a gossip rag handy will have their work cut out for them.
This will be Ratajkowski’s second book. The first, “My Body,” dropped in 2021 and was a bestselling collection of essays exploring gender, power dynamics, sexuality and the commodification of female beauty in the modeling and entertainment industries.
Ratajkowski’s foray into the spotlight came more than a decade ago when Robin Thicke’s controversial “Blurred Lines” music video made the model an overnight star. She was cast in David Fincher’s adaptation of “Gone Girl,” which hit theaters the following year, and catapulted to top fashion runways — Marc Jacobs, Versace, Victoria’s Secret and Dolce & Gabbana, to name a few. She she’s been romantically linked to Harry Styles, Eric Andre, Shaboozey, Brad Pitt and Pete Davidson, among others.
In 2023, she moonlighted as the host of the “High Low With EmRata” podcast, where she interviewed sex workers, investigated ethical nonmonogamy and pondered the etymology of the word “toxic.” The same year, she told The Times that she was coming into herself post-divorce, “Being able to assert what I want — that feels like it just started: My life as a creator and not as a muse.”
Wainheads will be delighted to see his alums in cameos: Kerri Kenney-Silver, Michael Ian Black, Thomas Lennon, and supporting roles for Zickel and Truglio. A large portion of the cast are his homies. But with Deutch, Gutierrez-Riley, Wang, Slattery, Impacciatore, and yes, Hamm, it’s as if they’re being inducted into a new mad family. Wain and Marino are basically catching Pokémon and hoping they can hold onto the roster (by that logic, yes, Paul Rudd is a legendary Pokémon). The film is anchored by Zoey — everything everywhere all this summer with Voicemails From Isabelle to Minions & Monsters — Deutch in the Dorothy Gale role, exuding a high level of perkiness consistent with the character’s can-do, wide-eyed, midwestern charm and heart.
A major standout, Ben Wang finally gets to show off his comedic abilities, portraying a self-assured, quick-witted agent who makes me laugh every time he reveals his sheltered upbringing in snappy whines at every inconvenience. Sabrina Impacciatore, who has proven to be a comedic juggernaut in The Paper, is having so much fun hamming it up as the mob boss-esque wicked witch counterpart, torturing her henchmen and deliciously chewing up the scenery whenever onscreen. I don’t think they use her to the height of her comedic prowess, but she’s a delight nonetheless. John Slattery is the film’s comedic MVP. The way the writers use his over-the-top character for comedy is downright hilarious every time. They use him as either a punchline or a force of nature, and he’s great. This movie is like Mad Men propaganda, and by God, it works. As someone who’s never seen it, Gail allowed me a better appreciation for Slattery and Hamm.
Man, we don’t deserve Jon Hamm. This is the second time I’ve seen him play a silly, fictionalized version of himself this year (the other being the SXSW crowd-pleasing rom-com Wishful Thinking, which Gail distributor Sony Pictures Classics acquired), and he also voice-acted in his comedic Mayor Jerry role in Hoppers. Maybe working with Wain in 2007’s The Ten was the canon event, but I consider his weird little sex scene with Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids his awakening. Since then, I’ve only seen him as unserious, and it’s delightful. Oz-like in appearance, he’s funny and befitting the film’s overall light, joyful nature.
LAST STATEMENT
Ultimately, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is a campy, delightful romp that succeeds as both a distinctive Hollywood‑centric riff and a Wizard of Oz reimagining, retaining a loving, twisted, demented charm. It’s a weird description, but it’s so high‑spirited and light‑hearted despite being strangely ultraviolent. It might as well be a live‑action episode of Smiling Friends (RIP), yet it’s everything the theatrical market needs today. Ten years ago, this would’ve been a studio production rather than an indie Sundance acquisition, but thank God it exists for the big screen. More absurdist Gail Daughtrys for cinemas (not streaming), please, because this is the most fun to be had in a theater all summer, if not the year thus far.
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