STACK May 2016 Issue 139

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Instead of returning to rally-cry roots, Chris Cheney mined his personal
travails to informThe Living End's new album, Shift. By Zoë Radas
LIVING
LEARNING
T he great thing about The Living End
is that when they leap into the air,
you never have any question about
whether they’re going to land. Melodies and
rhythms fling outwards but always snap back,
like rubber bands (not rubber balls). It’s the
pattern in the raw product that’s kind of
baked into the trio’s bones, and it’s all the
way through new album Shift – even though
the release sounds incredibly different from
their previous work, and thematically, it’s
brand new territory.
"I felt like the more honest and real that the
lyrics seemed to be, the better the song was
going to be,” says singer and guitarist Chris
Cheney. “It just felt like it would be doing
a disservice to the songs, I reckon, had we
dumbed them down. It’s the warts and all
and it can be a bit ugly, but that’s life, huh.”
Cheney and his bandmates Scott Owen
(bass) and Andy Strachan (drums) are
interested to see how these tracks will
grab the minds of listeners, considering
the former’s move to the introspective;
paradoxically, it could be more inclusive.
“We’ve always written in the third person,
and weren’t too literal with our lyrics. And
I think that’s more isolating,” Cheney says.
“We’ve got a lot of these real rally cry, sing-a-
long, anthem tunes, and in a way you almost
hand them over to the audience – at some of
our gigs, they take the lead vocal. But I really
feel like people are going to connect with this
album and with the band. They’re going to
hear stuff that doesn’t really sound like The
Living End.”
Single Keep On Running is acutely moving
and hopeful, with minor chords scattered
throughout the sweet parts. Cheney says it
began as a collaborative session with a mate
whose children “get along really well” with
It's the warts and
all and it can be a bit
ugly, but that's life
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