Taylor has also evolved as a lyricist. No shade to early romps like “70’s Street Munchies” or “Stole My Push Bike,” but punk’s reigning snarl champion has figured out how to address weighty issues without being didactic or surrendering the snotty squeal that made those early tracks so alluring. On “Knifey,” the band slows it down and lets the barre chords ring, allowing Taylor’s heartbreaking plea to burst through. ​​”All I ever wanted was to walk by the park/All I ever wanted was to walk by the river, see the stars/Please! Stop fucking me up,” she begs. But she’s armed and ready: “Out comes the night, out comes my knifey/This is how I get home nicely.” Taylor is either recalling a personal experience and the knife is her weapon of defense, or she’s channelling the ubiquitous dread all women face. In switching pronouns from “I” to “we” halfway through the track, Taylor inverts the “alone in the pit” trope from the beginning of the album; this psychic pain is near-universal. But, as ever, Taylor’s knotty internal struggle reigns: “I turn around and backtrack, because I ain’t that tough.” Comfort to Me transports us to a familiar, paradoxical world: uncertain, harsh, and magnetic.

Chris O'Connell on Amyl and the Sniffers' Comfort to me.

Pics: x, x.

From 1993 to 1995, [Mirha-Soleil] Ross and partner Xanthra Phillippa MacKay published gendertrash from hell, a quarterly zine which "[gave] a voice to gender queers, who've been discouraged from speaking out & communicating with each other". They managed the zine's publisher, genderpress, which also distributed other transsexual pamphlets and literature, corresponded with local organizations and sold buttons. In standard zine format, gendertrash was a combination of art, poetry, resource lists, serialized fiction, calls to action, classified ads, illustrations and collages and movie reviews. By and for transsexual, transgender and transvestite people, it addressed gender experiences at the individual and societal level and prioritized sex workers, low-income queers, trans people of colour and prisoners. Articles frequently addressed the erasure of transsexuals from lesbian, gay, bi and queer communities and the communities' co-opting of trans identities and issues. Four issues of gendertrash were published, and its run ended in 1995.

(“Dancing Wimmin” by Jeanne B [Mirha-Soleil Ross], from gendertrash issue #1, p. 9)

The Gendertrash from Hell zine issues on archive.org, link also contains the film Gender Troublemakers (1993)

Another link to the first issue (with the others in “related readings”, just below) this time on transreads.org