‘Some Mutts’: the song that launched Amyl and the Sniffers
Whatever trends the music world flips through, it’s the release of an album that I will always hold paramount. A body of work that allows narratives to flourish and sound exploration will always be better than a single song, especially when it’s been hyper-edited for radio or TikTok use. That being said, the mark of a great band is often the one-song calling card it has up its sleeve. Think of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’ or Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’—it’s one track that crystallises the genius shown elsewhere in the band’s discography, and for Amyl and The Sniffers, theirs might just be ‘Some Mutts (Can’t Be Muzzled)’.
The band’s third album, Cartoon Darkness, reaffirmed what we’ve all come to know in the last five years. This is a band to be well and truly reckoned with. A sonic tour-de-force that packs punching riffs and bouncing rhythm sections into songs led by Amy Taylor’s witty and emotive lyricism, they are, in many ways, the ultimate modern rock band.
While the fruitful Australian scene has cultivated a healthy slacker-cum-psychedelic genre that’s spearheaded by the likes of King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard, Courtney Barnett and Tame Impala, Amyl and The Sniffers have tapped into something more primal.
And no song typifies that more than the closer from their debut album, which is ‘Some Mutts (Can’t Be Muzzled)’. As a rolling drum roll gives way to a singular guitar line, chaos will soon ensue. It is so rousing you can almost picture Taylor walking a circle in the studio, inciting the beginnings of a violent mosh pit, as she prepared to spit fierce lyrics of defiant independence.
It may not be the band’s most progressive or instrumentally accomplished track, but ultimately, it’s the most crystallised example of their performative energy and artistic identity. Sonically, it’s both unrelenting and groovy, while lyrically, it’s defiant and heartbreaking at the same time. Nevertheless, it’s what quickly endeared fans to the band. For want of a less corny analogy, it introduced the band as both musical and societal underdogs who would soon have you fist-clenching, one part in joint anger, the other in resistance to not spin into unbridled chaos.
It introduced the world to a band who were unapologetically themselves. Artistic authenticity was something Taylor was never going to compromise on and, to this day, never has. “The weakest person in the room is a fucking liar,” she told NME in 2019. “The most brutally honest is the strongest—saying how you feel right in the moment when performing is brave as shit.”
In essence, that is what makes the band such a compelling proposition. Their vulnerability is packaged in brutal power and the honesty with which they approached ‘Some Mutts’. It is also what gave way to an open landscape upon which they could shoot their scattergun of modern punk influences on later records. Taylor’s unbridled energy was never shocking after this track. Instead, it was welcomed and encouraged. This song was a mere drop in what we later realised was a much-needed ocean of musical antidote.
They are savage in their confidence and relentless in their performance, making them one of the must-see live acts of any modern festival bill. But if you understandably can’t make it to see any of their shows, any version of ‘Some Mutts (Can’t Be Muzzled)’ playing through your speakers is as close as any tune gets to a replica, and it’s that right there that makes it their finest moment.
