Amyl and the Sniffers Q&A: ‘Feel like rotisserie chicken? You’ve gotta be that bird!’
Aussie rock band talk Coachella fashion, new music and live tours as the Indio, California, event gets underway
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Your support makes all the difference.Australian rock band Amyl & the Sniffers have arrived at Coachella festival in Indio, California, after a 14-hour flight from Melbourne.
Formed of singer Amy Taylor, drummer Bryce Wilson, guitarist Dec Martens and bassist Fergus Romer, they released their self-titled debut album in 2019. A follow-up, Comfort to Me, was released in 2021, and charted in the Top 40 in the UK.
We caught up with them ahead of their debut Coachella performance to find out what they have lined up, and how their festival experience is going so far.
Welcome to Coachella! Where have you guys come from?
Amy: “We just got straight in from Melbourne – a 14 hour flight, so not too bad.”
Amy, a few hours ago you posted a can of alcoholic iced tea on Instagram and said you were going to review it. What’s the verdict?
Amy: “I was excited by the big can – it looked delicious. I was gonna bring it in here and drink it but then they stopped me at security and I had to throw it out. So I cracked it and skulled half of it and it was pretty good!”
So even when you’re playing the festival you can’t bring your own drinks in?!
Ginger: “They chucked my lighter out! They were chucking people’s water out! It’s like airport security.”
Can we have some tips on how to deal with the heat?
Amy: “Do you feel like a rotisserie chicken?
I do!
Amy: “Well, you just gotta be that bird!”
Kanye was supposed to play on Sunday…
Gus: “I would have liked to have seen him, I’ve seen him before, at Big Day Out in Melbourne 2012, it was f***ing legendary.”
Swedish House Mafia and the Weeknd have replaced him. Who’d be your choice?
Gus: “I saw on TikTok it was rumoured it might be Red Hot Chili Peppers, then The Weeknd got confirmed and I was like, f***, it could have been the Chili Peppers!”
Dec: “I would have liked it to be AC/DC.”
What’s the most Coachella thing you’ve seen so far?
Gus: “Lots of bros with their shirts off. When it comes to a Coachella look, every day is a Coachella look for me.”
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Have you got any friends playing the festival?
Amy: “Idles, and I would peripherally call Slowthai an acquaintance. There are a bunch of Aussies here too, King Gizzard, Avalanches. I want to see Slowthai really bad, I’m a big fan. We’ve played festivals with him before and I said ‘I like your stuff’ and he said, ‘I like your stuff too’, and that’s as far as it went – but that’s good enough for me, the fact that he knows we exist.”
You coming back tomorrow?
Amy: “Nah, we’re gonna go and play Vegas on Sunday.”
Have you been before? Or does what happens in Vegas, stay in Vegas?
Dec: “Yeah we have and our tour manager won $100 on the pokies. Oh, and – we’ll call him out – we met a guy from the Sydney Opera House and he was in Vegas for a conference and he was on acid. We took him around Vegas for the night. I hope he’s still alive.”
What else are you up to in the free week between now and the second week of the festival?
Amy: “We’re doing some wink-wink nudge-nudge stuff, to be announced!”
Are you working on a new album yet?
Amy: “We're just gonna go hard touring the album from last year, Comfort To Me, because of Covid we didn’t get a chance to do it. We want to play live everywhere we can, as much as we can. That’s the goal for now.”
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