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the singer’s own offspring. “We’d been
saying for months, ‘We should crack a
couple of beers and write something
together,’ and one day we finally got
around to it. It was almost, I don’t know,
sort of like talking to our kids: ‘It’s all
going to be OK. There’s going to be
some pretty heavy times, and you’re
going to go through
some sh-t, but it will
work out.’ Yeah, when
everything’s going
great, there is that
bittersweet thing of,
well, for how long, until
it turns sour? But I think
that’s the beauty of a
song like that. You’ve
got to just live in the
now, don’t you. So yes,
it’s our
Chariots of Fire
.
Inspirational moment,” he chuckles.
From the inspirational to the emotive,
one particularly stand-out cut is
With
Enemies Like That
. The true quality of
Cheney’s voice is baldly laid out in its
melodies, and there’s absolutely no
leaning on laurels of nostalgia or phony
feelings; Cheney’s assertion that this is
“an ‘I’ record, not a ‘we’ record” filters
through all its parts. Perhaps it comes
from the band’s newly discovered,
inherent sense of selection. “You’ve
just got to find the right perspective,”
Cheney says. “For whatever reason, we
seem to have a better perspective and
a better way of stepping back, looking
at the songs and deciding on what they
needed. And sometimes that was less,”
he explains.
In terms of the catalyst for output,
there’s got to be a spark, and sometimes
the fiercer the better. “I don’t know
many bands that can just get in there
and produce greatness
without any kind of
friction,” Cheney says.
“We all butted heads.
There were some
doozies. We know each
other far too well, and
that’s the reason you
can say, ‘No,
you
get
f-cked.’” An adjudicator
came in the form
of Woody Annison,
long-time friend and
live engineer of the band’s shows. “He
knows how we want to sound live, and
that’s always the initial idea of going into
a studio – to try and catch that common
energy,” says Cheney. “He was going
to be great at being able to say, ‘You’ve
done enough takes for that,’ or ‘That
part’s fine, don’t squash all the energy
out of it by trying to perfect it.’ Because
that’s the danger: that you can get it
really, really good and then it’s boring.”
“But the only time we were disagreeing
on things was because we wanted to
find the best result,” he asserts. “And
that’s definitely what we got."
We all butted
heads; there
were some
doozies
The Living End: Scott Owen, Andy Strachan and Chris Cheney
UP THE JUNCTION
There’s a totally synchronised
breakdown at the heart of this
belter, in which drums, guitar,
bass and most importantly space
are in complete unison. But it’s
Cheney’s subtle harmonies and
the timbre of his voice, which
cuts through everything like
a sweet vinegar, which is the
kicker.
STARING DOWN
THE BARREL
In terms of vocals, this is the
most astonishing of the tracks
on
Shift
; were it played to you
in isolation, you may not know
it’s Cheney at all. His voice has
a vibrato which rolls onto a
meaner edge while Owen and
Strachan provide a relentless,
perpetual motion behind the
aching lyrics.
KEEP ON RUNNING
They say that any happy moment
is inherently sad, because
we’re aware that happiness
is ephemeral, like everything
else. That poignancy is captured
perfectly in gentle oscillations
between major and minor
chords while Strachan kicks
out little off-beat accents on
the snare, and chugging strings
complement the track's hopeful
feel.
WIRE
In this cracker, pithy rhyming
phrases are spat out, repeated,
and spun around to reflect
on themselves, and Strachan
gallops his sticks ferociously
across hi-hat and snare.
WITH ENEMIES
LIKE THAT
Try keeping your willies together
while listening to Cheney sing
“Remember when there was no
wrong or right, just a feeling in
the night.” Never mawkish, this
is genuine reflection all over.
SHIFT
'S
GEMS
11
FEATURE
MUSIC
MUSIC
Shift
by The Living End is out
May 13 via Dew Process.