The Living End are back in a big way with a stash of new singles, a new album just around the corner, and a string of fresh Aussie tour dates on the horizon. They’ve somehow even found time to sympathise with the social media managers of the world.
The release of the band’s new album, Shift, which is set to drop 13th May, was preceded by the release of ‘Keep On Running’, the band’s latest single, which frontman Chris Cheney co-wrote with mates Dylan Berry and Stefan Litrownik.
The stirring and powerful track is something of a departure for the Melbourne-bred rockabilly punk crew, whom fans are used to seeing belt out swaggering rock and roll tunes with fiery guitar licks and rousing socio-political messages.
‘Keep On Running’ is low on Cheney’s famously electrifying fretwork and instead features acoustic strumming and a prominent string arrangement, which has led some fans to claim The Living End are indulging their “inner Coldplay“.
The band have since responded to the criticism of the track via their official Facebook page, with Cheney telling fans the band welcome any and all reactions to their music and that ‘Keep On Running’ is simply the sound of TLE moving forward.
“Holy cow what a whirlwind couple of weeks for all things TLE,” Cheney wrote. “It’s been interesting reading all the comments about the new material. Controversial? You bet! There’s been good, bad and yes plain ugly but mostly good!”
Hey you, Holy cow what a whirlwind couple of weeks for all things TLE. It's been interesting reading all the comments…
Posted by The Living End onSunday, March 27, 2016
“The album itself has quite a few sonic surprises, good ones! Loud ones! Ugly ones!” Cheney continued. Responding to one sympathetic commenter, Cheney explained that, far from abandoning their roots, the band are in fact embracing the very reason they started playing music.
“We are trying to come up with different stuff not to be clever, but to be GREAT!” he wrote. “To evolve and explore and find new hooks and new ways of doing things! We do what we think sounds good. That’s why we started playing in the first place, it’s that simple!”
Earlier this month, The Living End made headlines alongside Josh Pyke when both criticised recent changes to Facebook’s News Feed algorithm. The Living End issued a tongue-in-cheek missive in which they took a few jabs at the ubiquitous social media network.
