Nick Launay recorded "Cartoon Darkness" at the Foo Fighters' 606 Studios in Los Angeles. That choice of location is not incidental. Amyl and the Sniffers had spent two albums establishing themselves as one of the more authentic forces in Australian punk, a band that sounded like it came from Melbourne because it did. Recording at a facility associated with one of the most commercially successful rock bands in history, in a city they do not live in, with a producer of Launay's scale: this is a band that could have stayed in its comfort zone and did not.
The album was released on October 25, 2024. It won Best LP/EP at the 2025 Rolling Stone Australia Awards, and took Independent Album of the Year and Best Independent Rock Album or EP at the AIR Awards of 2025. These are not minor recognitions. They suggest that the band successfully translated its energy into a larger room without losing what made it matter.
What Nick Launay Does
Nick Launay has produced records for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, INXS, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Public Image Ltd. The common thread is not genre. The common thread is that all of those artists had a defined sound that required a producer who could scale it rather than transform it. That is what Launay does for Amyl and the Sniffers on "Cartoon Darkness."
Amy Taylor's vocals remain directly in front of everything. Bryce Wilson on drums, Declan Mehrtens on guitar, Gus Romer on bass: the band is still a unit, still punchy and direct. What Launay adds is dimensionality in the sound. The record is louder in a produced sense without being louder in a hollow, over-polished sense. The energy does not disappear into clarity. That is the thing that needed to not happen and it did not happen.
The Range That Surprised People
"Cartoon Darkness" runs from classic punk to something closer to glam on "U Should Not Be Doing That" to the stormy ballad quality of "Big Dreams." Thirteen tracks covering that ground without falling apart. The punk lineage is audible in the attack and pace. The glam influence is in the swagger of the guitar phrasing on certain tracks. The ballads work because the band is not trying to be tender in a way that contradicts the rest of what it does. The emotion is earned by what surrounds it.
"Chewing Gum" and "Jerkin" represent the harder end of the record. "U Should Not Be Doing That" got the most attention as the leading single, which makes sense because it is the most immediately accessible point of entry. But the record does not peak at the single. The full sequence holds together in a way that justifies the thirteen track commitment.
What the Awards Are Actually Tracking
The 2025 Rolling Stone Australia recognition is significant not because awards matter inherently but because this particular recognition suggests the band crossed a threshold with Australian music observers who have watched them since the self-titled debut in 2019. "Comfort to Me" in 2021 was the record that convinced people outside Australia to pay close attention. "Cartoon Darkness" is the record that convinced the domestic industry that the international attention was not overstated.
The AIR Awards specifically track independent music, and the category wins there situate Amyl and the Sniffers within an ecosystem that values what they do on terms that do not require them to compromise. The fact that they won while releasing a record made in Los Angeles with a major scale producer is the interesting part. The context of production did not disqualify them from the community that matters to them.
Melbourne to Los Angeles to Sao Paulo
The band's movements in 2024 and 2025 trace a trajectory worth noting. They made the album in LA, released it globally, then spent 2025 opening for The Offspring in Brazil and supporting AC/DC on the Australian leg of the Power Up Tour. The AC/DC connection is particularly pointed. AC/DC is the prototype for Australian rock that achieved global scale without pretending to be anything other than what it is. Amyl and the Sniffers are doing a version of that same project in a different era with different musical vocabulary.
The Sao Paulo shows were their own, standalone, not attached to The Offspring run. That matters. A band that can sell tickets on its own terms in a market as competitive as Brazil has genuine international traction, not just press circuit visibility.
The Useful Comparison
Comparing Amyl and the Sniffers to their Australian predecessors is a game critics play because the lineage is obvious. What is less often noted is that the band is not nostalgic in its approach. Taylor's lyrics are contemporary and direct. The attitude she brings to a stage has nothing to do with the past. The instrumentation nods to an older tradition without performing it.
"Cartoon Darkness" is not the album of a band coasting on energy alone. The craft is present in the sequencing, in the production decisions, in the range of emotional terrain covered without losing coherence. The Foo Fighters' studio did not make them different. It gave them room to be what they already were, at greater volume.
That is the hard thing to do and the thing they did.
