“This song is nine years old. If you don’t know the words… well, that’s just un-Australian, isn’t it?” That’s Chris Cheney on the mic, in between Living End songs on a damp, cloudy autumn day at mid-sized Perth music festival Blackjack. It’s a comment that says more about the Living End than I think Cheney intended. First of all, it says that they are old. That’s the elephant in the room as far as the Living End are concerned. That they are second last on this bill, after Gnarls Barkley and before the Pixies, is testament to somebody’s ability to ignore that the Living End get booked for gigs now on the basis of songs they wrote a decade ago.

Granted, it was a flippant comment, but to say that it’s un-Australian not to know that the word “second” in this song is to be followed with “solution” is to say that the Living End are as antiquated and embarrassing as other supposedly intrinsic Australian values. They are the mateship of Australian music, they are the Kokoda. They remain an impressive sight: black clad figures stark against the white light and smoke, only three of them busting out their great wall of shred, and I have to admit to experiencing a guilty chill at the apex of their set, but it’s hard to imagine a future contribution to Australian music from them more significant that their name on a line-up.

by Matt Giles