The Living End Roll on
» Fat As Butter 2011 First Line Up Announcement - July 26, 2011
» Big Day Out 2012 - Sydney Showground, NSW - January 29, 2012
» Big Day Out 2012 - Gold Coast Parklands, QLD - January 22, 2012
» The Living End: More Than White Noise - July 30, 2008
» The Living End Roll on - September 6, 2006
» The Living End - Palace, The, Vic - September 22, 2006
Ten years, four albums and countless tours down the track The Living End show no sign of letting up. The band had a stellar start to their career in the late 90s. Radio immediately loved them, their first two singles (Save the Day and Prisoner of Society) were hits and offers to tour overseas rolled in. Their debut self-titled LP came out in 1999, and this was quickly followed by the 2001 smash Roll On. From there, things got tricky. In the intervening four years, they were dropped from their American label, changed line up and released a rather limp third album, Modern Artillery.
Recently though, the boys have got it back together. In 2004, they toured the US, supporting the likes of Jet and Blink 182. Their new album, State of Emergency has put them back on track in Australia. Earlier this month, The Living End kicked of an extensive Australian tour. Bass player, Scott Owen, talked to the Dwarf about the tour, the new album, going back to America and why the band is more popular now than ever before.
“I reckon it is because stylistically, our music is pretty across the board because we are into so many different styles of bands. We have also worked extremely hard to always improve our standards as a band and (we’ve) done as many shows as we can to get out there to our audience with the hope of it always growing…and because of our sheer talent of course (laughs).”
Earlier this year, The Living End focused on touring the larger population centres in Australia, but, almost in spite of their new wave of popularity, they’ve opted to follow up this tour with a more regional focused tour.
“We do think of increasing awareness of the band as much as possible. We are ambitious and want to be as successful as we can, commercially and as artists. It was great to be playing bigger venues on our last tour because it gave us the opportunity to use more production elements and play a longer set and do some things that aren’t possible in other venues.
It is easier to play to a smaller audience because the response from the crowd is much more direct and it is easier to gauge the room in a smaller venue. It is hard to feel a connection with people at the back of a really big festival although the upshot of those crowds is that when they really get vocal it is a huge sound and is like nothing else.”
One of the obvious things about a live show by The Living End is the constant change in dynamics. The band is tight and together, but there is always the potential to feed off the crowd and fly off on tangents, or simply take songs in a new direction to keep them spontaneous and interesting.
“We like to mix up (what we play on tour) a bit for the sake of the people who come and see us all the time and for the sake of ourselves although it feels good to play a lot of the same material because once the band gets into a rhythm of playing the same songs night after night they only get tighter and more comfortable therefore better.
I think the improvised parts just come from playing the songs so often and having such a familiar understanding of each other as musicians means we are confident to go into territory that we haven’t been to before in songs. We rehearse our set a lots so sometimes we talk about bits that we can leave without too much arrangement.”
The Living End has announced a new Australian tour in the second half of this year, with a regional focus. Owen was keen to point out that it wasn’t in reaction to the band’s recent success, but something that they feel is necessary to do to keep the band successful.
“We always feel a need to get in the van and do the kind of tour that takes us all over our own country because we love doing that. I think the legacy of good Aussie music is born on gigs in all the far and wide corners of Australia in local pubs as much as it is in big concert venues in the city. Everyone loves the live music and we love going anywhere and everywhere to play.
Going to the really remote places in the north of WA is always a bit weird because it is such a different lifestyle and environment than I am used to. When we played to a crowd of miners in Karatha it was rough as guts but they had a ball so we did too.”
America seems to finally be waking up to The Living End. As opposed to the release of Modern Artillery, the band is making some changes for the release of State of Emergency.
“Well the major difference is that we are on a different record label this time so from that side of it there is a lot of unfamiliar turf to cover but we have confidence in them so it is exciting. We are doing a similar tour to what we have done in the past but I feel as though we have a stronger album under our belts this time.
"It was different not having a US label when we recorded State of Emergency as opposed to all the other albums with the exception of our first. Our American label had a lot of opinions on the ideas we had for our albums and there was a freedom this time that we only had to consider our own ideas.
"We hope that we can have some kind of impact in the States with this album because we think it stands up strongly enough to be a world class album so hopefully it will do well enough for us to continue going back there to do decent sized gigs in the future. We want to be able to make music for a long time so to be able to have it appreciated in any part of the world is the goal.
The Living End is on tour throughout Australia during September.
