It may have been 20 years since The Living End were talking about being a brat that talks back, but god damn, they haven’t lost the punk. If you don’t believe me, give a spin to ‘Death Of The American Dream’, a track off their newest album Wunderbar.
“I’m stoked that you brought up that song because that’s probably my favourite off the record,” remarks the bands Double Bassist Scott Owen. “That one was just a bit of a jam and when we demoed it we didn’t have any lyrics written.
“So I just barked down the microphone. I was pretending I was on the phone to somebody and that was my phone call was the verses of the song. It was this thing called ‘Can I leave my number’ as if I was leaving a message for someone,” he continues.
“We were more focused about getting the energy right to make it a banger of a song and didn’t care as much about the lyrics and Chris took it away and turned it into the ‘Death Of The American Dream’ which turned it to a completely other dimension.
“It’s the first time we had ever written like that. I didn’t expect it to turn into what it did, it was just something we did for a bit of fun and then it grew legs and got a life of its own.”
Recording the album over six weeks in Berlin, Scott spoke about how the band were “fish out of water” when they headed over to work with Tobias Kuhn, a producer the band had never met before.
“The whole idea was to take a bit of a leap of faith,” he says. “We didn’t want to play it safe and put ourselves in the same situation we have before, so instead we thought we would take an adventure and work with someone we don’t know in a place that’s really far away.
“It was a great idea; it was the best thing we could of done,” Scott expands. “Tobias was unreal; we got along with him really well and had really similar musical tastes and ideas so it was a really good collaboration there in a sense.
“We try not to have too many preconceived ideas about songs and try to just let them go to where they want to be. We just want each song to have their own identity.”
Now back in Australia, The Living End will once again be hitting the road for the Wunderbar tour and bringing along West Thebarton for the ride.
“Truthfully, I don’t really know much about West Thebarton,” laughs Scott before continuing, “so I’m really looking forward to touring with them so I can check them out. We have just done a bunch of gigs in Europe which has been really good for us and now we have a few gigs between no and when the tour starts but we absolutely cannot wait to get back up there again.
“Being in a studio is great, but it feels like you’ve got the shackles on and everything is under the microscope so we all can’t wait to let lose on stage again.”
When & Where: The Forum, Melbourne – November 3.
Release: Wunderbar is out now.
Written by Alex Callan
