Amyl and the Sniffers
“You’re a dumb cunt / You’re an asshole.”
This is the not-so-subtle opening salvo Amyl and the Sniffers singer Amy Taylor shouts at the top of “Jerkin’,” the super-posi self-empowerment anthem that kicks off her world-beating band’s acclaimed third full-length, Cartoon Darkness. The song is a biting indictment of music industry misogyny that still persists in 2025. But it could just as easily apply to fans who’ve yet to fall for the Melbourne, Australia, pub-rock punks.
Local fans of irony mullets, platinum Farrah Fawcett cuts, frothing, rabid guitars and big bass hooks at amphetamine tempos — the kind of punk rock that makes the idea of a riot sound like a party — who’ve so far slept on the Sniffers might as well keep slapping the proverbial snooze bar. Friday’s show at Marathon Music Works sold out months ago, and the cheapest resale ticket on StubHub was $109 as of this writing. That might give you sticker shock regarding a band that made its pre-pandemic Nashville debut at Springwater, but Taylor & Co. work hard for the money, having won over crowds opening stadium tours for Foo Fighters and buzzing among influencers at Coachella.
That’s thanks in large part to Taylor, an aggressively ebullient presence who marches across the stage like a ’70s cartoon superheroine. She yells shoutouts to friends and kiss-offs to enemies with spitting defiance, amid nightlife imagery that blows by like a Hangover end-credits montage from a wild night of broken bottles, crashed cars and feel-good bad decisions in The Land Down Under.
While Taylor might be Australia’s most charismatic export since Steve Irwin, the Sniffers are perhaps The Lucky Country’s biggest sensation since Silverchair, at least when it comes to bands not named Tame Impala or King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. But unlike those bands, who sound like they could’ve come from any normal English-speaking country, the Sniffers are unmistakably Ausome: Taylor’s rants and raves are chockablock with cheeky, endearingly parochial slang. So, in the name of service journalism for locals who are holding tickets, included below is a glossary of selected jargon from Sniffers set-list staples. Whether or not you knew that “amyl” is short for “amyl nitrate,” the medical name for the club drug known Stateside as “poppers,” now you can know what you’re shouting about when you’re shouting along.
Knifey
The song: “Knifey”
The lyric: Out comes the night, out comes my knifey / This is how I get home nicely
As “barbie” is to “barbecue grill” (as well as the party where you eat what you cooked on it), “knifey” is to “knife.” On this cut from 2021’s Comfort to Me, it means, “Keep being pervy and creepy and I’ll fuckin’ cut you.”
Squirter
The song: “Jerkin’”
The lyric: Keep jerkin’ on your squirter / You will never get with me, yeah
It means exactly what you think it means, you dumb cunt.
Fucking Spiders
The song: “Jerkin’”
The lyric: You are fucking spiders / I am drinking riders
This derives from the colorful Aussie idiom “we’re not here to fuck spiders,” meaning “we mean business.”
Gacked; On Tick
The song: “Gacked on Anger”
The lyric: I’m stressed on tick / Cause I’m gacked on anger
“Gacked” is how they say “under the influence” Down Under, and “on tick” means “on credit.” For this translation of a line from the band’s 2019 self-titled LP, let’s go with, “I’m drunk on piss and vinegar because retail therapy doesn’t work and now I’m poor.” If you were unsure, near the end of the song, Taylor switches up the lyric and yells, “I’m stressed about money.”
Pokies; Baccy; Gov
The song: “Capital”
The lyric: Slapping on the pokies and buying all the baccy / And the gov takes a big tax
“Pokies” are “poker machines,” which are what we call slot machines in the States and are very popular in Australia. Also, as “knifey” is to knife, “baccy” is to tobacco. There’s no better place to smoke than a casino. But the house always wins, and here the house is the “gov,” otherwise known as “The Commonwealth Government of Australia.”
Stuff Ya
The song: “Choices”
The lyric: Life has layers, it’s lawless / Ah, stuff ya
A variation of “get stuffed,” which is how Aussies say, “G’day, now fuck off!”
Snags
The song: “Tiny Bikini”
The lyric: Eh, there’s too many snags at the party / Eh, so I’m just gonna walk
“Snags” are sausages. Here it means, “This place is a sausage fest, let’s leave.”
Doing In (as in “to do in one’s head”)
The song: “Doing in Me Head”
The lyric: It’s doing in me head, head, head, head
“This mad world is driving me insane” … I think.
Biff
The song: “Mole (Sniff Sniff)”
The lyric: I wanna see some fighting / I want to see some biff / Sniff sniff, sniff sniff, sniff sniff
A “biff” is a fight. Going back to 2018’s Big Attraction EP for this example, it means something like, “Let’s rock, let’s roll, it’s party time!”
