Amyl & The Sniffers have announced ‘Cartoon Darkness’, their first new album in three years. See its artwork and tracklist below.
The Australian punk band shared the news today (August 21) with the release of new single ‘Chewing Gum’, which arrives with a heady black-and-white music video. Watch it below. ‘Cartoon Darkness’ will be released on October 25.
In a press release, frontwoman Amy Taylor explains that the album is “climate crisis, war, AI, tiptoeing on the eggshells of politics, and people feeling like they’re helping by having a voice online when we’re all just feeding the data beast of Big Tech, our modern-day god.”
“It’s about the fact that our generation is spoon-fed information,” she continues. “We look like adults, but we’re children forever cocooned in a shell. We’re all passively gulping up distractions that don’t even cause pleasure, sensation or joy, they just cause numbness.”
The band recorded the album with producer Nick Launay, known for his engineering work for post-punk bands such as Public Image Ltd., The Slits, and Gang of Four. In recent years, he’s worked on albums by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and IDLES. ‘Chewing Gum’ marks the album’s second single following last May’s ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’.
“‘Cartoon Darkness’ is driving headfirst into the unknown, into this looming sketch of the future that feels terrible but doesn’t even exist yet. A childlike darkness,” Taylor adds. “I don’t want to meet the devil half-way and mourn what we have right now. The future is cartoon, the prescription is dark, but it’s novelty. It’s just a joke. It’s fun.”
The album’s release will also see a limited-edition glow in the dark vinyl with alternate artwork, along with collectible plastic cups featuring the band members. ‘Cartoon Darkness’ is available for pre-order via the band’s merch store here.
The tracklist for ‘Cartoon Darkness’ is:
- ‘Jerkin’’
- ‘Chewing Gum’
- ‘Tiny Bikini’
- ‘Big Dreams’
- ‘It’s Mine’
- ‘Motorbike Song’
- ‘Doing In Me Head’
- ‘Pigs’
- ‘Bailing On Me’
- ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’
- ‘Do It Do It’
- ‘Going Somewhere’
- ‘Me And The Girls’
Amyl & The Sniffers will embark on a UK and Europe tour later this year in support of the album, with several dates already sold out. The band have now added a third date at London’s Roundhouse on November 13. Get tickets here.
