Amyl and the Sniffers @ O2 Academy, Edinburgh, 23 Aug

Fellow Aussie outfit Cable Ties warm up an eager audience of crust jackets and bottle-blonde mullets with a satisfactory set of powerful punk. Lead vocalist and guitarist Jenny McKechnie cuts a rug like the tipsy aunt at a family gathering during the instrumental interval of Time for You, a bold, bouncy track held down by the solid rhythm section formed by drummer Shauna Boyle and bassist Nick Brown. Clicking open a beer can into his microphone, Brown remarks how honoured the band are to be playing in the homeland of AC/DC legends Bon Scott (whose statue they visited in his birthplace of Kirriemuir before the show) and the Young brothers. The highlight of their set is Thoughts Back, where Boyle takes over on lead vocals and McKechnie accompanies with infectious B-52’s-style harmonies. 

Shania Twain’s magnum opus Man! I Feel Like A Woman! blasts through the speakers as Amyl and the Sniffers' Amy Taylor prances onto the stage and yelps the titular refrain in her nasally Antipodean accent. Guitarist Dec Martens mimics the song’s iconic riff as the rest of the Sniffers get ready for the opening track – Control. Within seconds Taylor and her henchmen have perfectly embodied the song, assuming absolute control over the rowdy sea of limbs from which just-poured pints are launched in every conceivable direction. Taylor is cock of the walk, swishing her feathered Farrah Fawcett fringe and showing off with her best Charles Atlas flex whenever she deems it necessary.

Image: Amyl and the Sniffers @ O2 Academy, Edinburgh, 23 Aug by Elliot Hetherton 

“That’s the song all the mammies sing on the buckfast!” she laughs, as the band revel in the aftermath of Got You. Taylor quickly turns the audience’s attention to the nifty backdrop of the stage, a design by artist and activist Aretha Brown which reads ‘AUSTRALIA HAS A BLAK FUTURE – TREATY NOW’. She explains that this collaboration with Brown was born from a burning anger towards the Australian government’s corporate greed and unending neglect of the country’s Aboriginal/Indigenous peoples. The band have been touring with this backdrop since July, showing true solidarity and commitment to the cause which the Edinburgh crowd respond to with an ensemble of encouraging whoops and hollers. 

Bassist Gus Romer dances the robot as drummer Bryce Wilson thumps away at the introductory kick drum of Security. Taylor sings the plea of a thousand desperate party animals from failed nights-out gone by: 'Security, will you let me in your pub / I’m not lookin’ for trouble, I’m lookin’ for love!' She catches a flying bra and ties it round her waist like a WWE belt, proceeding to shake her posterior in the faces of the frenzied front-rowers. The Sniffers end on Knifey, which Taylor prefaces by ordering the crowd: “Be sexy, be shy, be frigid, be whatever the fuck you want!” It is viscerally clear how much this final song means to all the women, nonbinary and queer people in the audience who identify with Taylor’s experience and watch, unmoving, as she expels her frustration: 'Please, stop fucking me up'.