Shift is The Living End's seventh album. It was released in 2016, five years after The Ending Is Just The Beginning Repeating.
Self-indulgent rant incoming: I am unashamedly a massive fan of The Living End. But... if I may quote the Screaming Jets... it's the line "the ones who love you always hurt you the most" that comes to mind here. I have a theory that diehard fans of a band are overly polarised in their judgement of individual songs or albums. By this I mean that if a TLE song crosses the bar of being a decent listen, then I'll proclaim it to be the greatest thing since sliced bread; yet if it only gives me a lukewarm reaction then I'll be dismissing it as utterly terrible. Shift is quite a mix of these two situation so let's see how this pans out...
A few songs would be completely at home on Roll On, such as Death, Up the Junction and One Step. The latter feels too staccato and disjointed, but I guess it does it's job as a quick opening track. Up The Junction hits the nail on the head with brilliantly catchy pub-rock instrumentals, but for me is ruined by the cliched lyrics. Death is a bit disjointed and the chorus is somehow lacking in catchiness, but all of these niggles are forgiven when it comes time for its instrumental bridge, which rocks out brilliantly.
Speaking of previous TLE albums, Monkey's catchy pop fun would fit in seamlessly on State of Emergency. And Life As We Know It is solid riff-rock as per White Noise, although it's not particularly memorable and the "megaphone distortion" effect on the lead vocals is a real turn-off for me.
This distortion afflicts a few songs on this album, which is a shame since the overall recording quality is really good. The bottom end of kick-drum and double-bass have nice clean meat to them (as much as I'd dig some slappy double-bass goodness, it would probably be out of place here), the guitars are crisp with some nice stereo effects and the cymbals are sweet. Keep On Running (which strangely has a harshness to the cymbals) is a highlight for its great use of stereo guitar effects and bonus points for the wonderful blending of the strings.
Several songs remind me of post-1980s U2, which is not a good thing. The worst of them is
Wire, particularly the chorus. It's a similar story for
With Enemies Like That, which consists of beautiful instruments undermined by a tacked-on chorus and cliched lyrics (in particular, the line "
turn on the 8 track, play it 'round again" is somehow a huge let-down for me).
Keep On Running is the other way around, where the chorus is a highlight but the verses sometimes leave me cold. The strings are a wonderful addition to the song here. Overall, somehow Keep On Running is a song that on one listen will feel generic and contrived, but another time I will find it utterly inspiring.
Staring Down the Barrel gets off to a great start with the intro (the vocals sound wonderful here), but somehow I find the chorus lacks sparkle. The rest of the song gives off a nice late-80s rock vibe (Bruce Springsteen perhaps?) with the bridge in particular being a wonderful highlight.
So far, most of the praise here has been accompanied by a qualifier. None are needed for Coma, I am very pleased to report. The song has a wonderful sparseness to it, especially the Roxanne-esque guitar. Oh, and the minimalist chorus is a delight. The bridge is quite weird and out of place, but I'm always a fan of that! In a strange back-flip for me, normally I dislike it when songs fade out as an ending, but here I think the refrain disappearing into the distance would have worked a treat. Regardless, Coma is a highlight of the album and the song that immediately comes to mind when I think of Shift.
Favourite songs
I diggit?
After much careful consideration, the verdict I have reached is "meh".
