The Breakdown
End Scene highly impressed us with their debut album ‘All My Ghosts‘ way back in 2021 and they are back with the expansive journey that is ‘I Will Not Live Safe, I Will Live True’: a true declaration of intent that permeates every note.
The album comes from the fevered imagination of James Jennings whose literary background ensure lyrics that are intelligent, poetic and filled with meaning and passion, delivered through the instrumentation and production skills of Tom Dufficy. Joel Van Gestel adds drums and Jennings’s daughters Lily and Ella get in on the act, providing backing vocals to two tracks (‘Silver Screen’ and ‘Big Feelings’).
Jennings says of the title:
The album title ‘I Will Not Live Safe, I Will Live True’ is inspired by something actor Justice Smith said while being interviewed about his 2024 film I Saw the TV Glow. The film really struck a chord with me – it deals with themes around being your authentic self, and I feel like the album title is a good mantra for anyone who needs some courage to make art and put it out into the world.
Opening track ‘Romanticise Now’, is a companion or sequel to a song ‘Bittersweet Spell’ from the debut album – being more about rejecting nostalgia and welcoming the present. It floats on a crisp wall of guitars with Jenning’s vocals delivering a melody that is dreamy and reflective, replete with doo-wops in the distance. It’s an anthemic track that positively sparkles with a yearning tone.
This is followed by ‘Be Real’, a track about the sobre fact that not all dreams come true. In this track, you can detect elements of the Dunedin/Flying Nun sound – traces of The Chills in the instrumentation and vocal delivery, jangling guitars and melancholia carried on the back of a soaring chorus and crunchy guitar solo.
The chiming guitars of ‘In The After’ are majestic and bold, with Jennings’s vocals understated and enigmatic, the song dealing as it does with the supernatural and bolstered by a delicious female backing vocal. This is a statuesque pop song that floats in the ether like a silken veil – a chorus so catchy it needs a vaccine.
Jennings claims some form of ADHD creates a wild variety of styles in his writing, no more evident than ‘Flavour of the Month’ which in contrast to the first three tracks is a brash punky song delivered with a shouty sneer, excoriating the vacuous and ephemeral world of influencers and celebrity culture, mixed in with what Jennings says is some good old-fashioned bitching and moaning about the ravishes of time. He says:
Look, there’s probably a bit of ‘old man yells at cloud’ about the lyrics, but fuck it, it’s how I was feeling when I wrote it. The song goes hard, that’s all that matters.
It’s filled with a wry sense of humour, a cathartic delivery tinged with an antipodean twang, a sardonic tone and a raised eyebrow. The video, a humorous and very literal interpretation of the song’s lyrics, was shot, directed and edited by Jennings’ teenage daughter, Lily.
She did an amazing job and has essentially been roped into a rich family tradition of goofy,
zero-budget videos. Poor bugger.
It’s all fun and games for End Scene with a serious message underneath.
The raucous barbed-wire blitz of ‘Land Of Plenty’ comes next. A cathartic shouty number, it’s another slight change in tack from End Scene’s usual anthemic pop, delivered in a raw punk blast fitting for it’s acerbic commentary on the state of the nation – fittingly a couple of days before the rather distasteful Australia Day holiday on 26 January (Australia being one of the only nations in the world to nominate the date of the colonisation of a country as a national day).
Jennings says of the track:
Releasing it close to Australia Day felt appropriate. It’s a punk song (I try to squeeze at least one on per album) that I wrote during Covid times that began as a reaction to people behaving like animals in supermarkets. A year or two later I added a chorus about the “Lucky Country” not being so lucky for everyone. It’s a song about the decline of empathy, essentially.
It’s raw, authentic and a blast of pure angry punk:
Everything’s fine in the land of plenty
Pockets are full and our hearts are empty
You can do you best to try and tempt me
But you won’t get me
It’s visceral and heart pumping stuff from this vital duo.
‘Nothing Is An Accident’ returns to the jingle jangle pop with, according to Jennings, references his experience with the drug ayahuasca and the way it opend hi mind to the interconnectedness of existence. It’s a track that is suitable hypnotic and infused with a psych sparkle.
A Million Ways to Break Your Heart’ shimmers and sparkles like the light of the sun off a slowly flowing stream, with louche backing vocals and a steady, yearning pace.
James Jennings says of the track:
I tend to write and record demos pretty quickly, at which point they’re more like pencil sketches. Tom (Dufficy) then adds all the instruments and turns them into full-colour paintings. I usually suggest some references – for this I was after a Wilco-meets-Chris Isaak vibe – but Tom always brings his own unique flavour to the songs too.
Lyrically, ‘A Million Ways to Break Your Heart’ grapples with what Jennings calls humanity’s slow and painful decline. He explains:
I know it sounds depressing and possibly a bit dramatic, but when I look at society and the world at large, it makes me feel pretty sad and despondent. This song is really about dropping the brave face for a moment and admitting that sometimes you have to will yourself to get through the day.
‘A Million Ways to Break Your Heart’ isn’t about giving up, though. I think strength comes from being completely honest with yourself, and others. Ultimately it’s a wish to get off the hamster wheel, stop doing what’s not working and move into something that aligns more with who we truly are.
Indeed there is a pervasive air of melancholia which augments the bittersweet pop melody. It’s a majestic track from a duo well versed in the art of anthemic treasures.
‘Silver Screen’ is burnished with the backing vocals of Jennings’s daughters, adding a filigree of softness to the delivery, written about his daughter Lily:
…inspiring me and seeing the best in me, even when I don’t see it myself
It a heart-warming track that is both anthemic and immersive as Jenning sings your a star on a silver screen – fittingly an expansive widescreen epic that coasts on a gorgeous synth bed.
‘New’ is an ethereal and haunting track augmented by weeping strings and a steady ambulant flow, drenched in melancholy and sense of deep yearning. There are genetic strands in which the frail delicate vocals can be traced to Robert Forster and The Go-Betweens and a low fi sparkle filled with veracity and pain.
The perfectly lyrics capture the zeitgeist – It’s been so long since anything felt new – too much thinking about old times, thinking of you... – with a sense of ennuis and longing, a reflection of the feelings in our current times of stasis and entropy.
Singer/songwriter James Jennings says of the the track:
To paraphrase, and possible bastardise, the words of pre-slap Will Smith in ‘Men In Black II’, it’s about the dichotomy of feeling old and busted, as opposed to the new hotness. Being stuck in a monotonous routine is something I’m sure everyone can relate to, especially post-lockdowns, and this song, I guess, is a plea or a wish for something new to materialise and make the world seem exciting and full of possibilities again.
The accompanying video shot by Lily Jennings, Sarafina Pea, End Scene and produced, directed and edited by the band is an affable, charming performance piece capturing a sense of innocence and growth as the band slowly gets back into performance and playing. The travails of waking up after a long slumber and a hope to start again fresh and energised is a common theme after the vicissitudes of the past couple of years, and deep inside End Scene is a spark of resolution. Of course the band explains it slightly differently:
The video…tells the story of a musician who finds a JJBot 2000 android in the trash and decides to take it home to make some music with, soon figuring out there was a very good reason the glitchy andoid was left out for garbage collection in the first place.
A wry and amusing accompaniment to the music, nonetheless:
‘Pull Focus’ as another pure pop delight with The Chills-influence that charmingly references Jennings’s ADHD – I could never pull focus, I never get my ducks in a row. It’s a charming luminescent track threaded with a self-deprecating sense of humour.
The half spoken and reflective ‘Without You’ is about unrequited love – whispered and yearning about that could have been, exhibiting a deep romanticism.
Final track ‘Big Feelings’ is the slow reflective close that fits the tone of the album – a slowly evolving epic track that builds up in a dreamy fugue, hypnotic and immersive as Jennings sings about the transience of feelings. Time may heal all wounds but this is not always a positive thing as memories fade.
Despite some raucous interludes that are cathartic and bold, ‘I Will Not Live Safe, I Will Live True’ is threaded through with an almost naive blush: gentle, romantic and wistful musings about life, a personal treatise that is achingly beautiful in parts and filled with a wide-eyed passion and authenticity.
‘I Will Not Live Safe, I Will Live True’ is out today and available to download and stream through the link above and here.
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