Electric Touch is releasing their Island Records debut Never Look Back on March 20th. The album was produced by Howard Benson and, based on fan reaction to the first single, “Don’t Stop,” (co-written by AA favorite Ryan Star) the album should be interesting. The song’s catchy and addictive but there’s also a cool story going on underneath what’s seemingly a meaningless pop song. That's the case with all of the band's music.

“We try and make music that has a few levels to it,” said Electric Touch lead singer Shane Lawlor in a recent interview with Alternative Addiction. “You can turn it on and not care about the lyrics and it’ll just put you in the mood to go to a club on a Saturday night. But if you want to look deeper you can appreciate the lyrics because there’s stories in there and there’s poetry in there. That’s how we do it. It’s got to have the hooks because we want as many people listening as possible, but if people want to go deeper we want to give them poetry, and we really want to paint them a picture with the music.”

Electric Touch can have all of the lyrics and ambition they want when making the record but there’s rising belief in rock right now that if a band can’t play a song live, they shouldn’t put it on the record. If you have to pipe something in for a live show, don’t record it in the first place. Lawlor disagrees with that thought.

“I’d give them a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s by The Beatles and have them listen to that,” said Lawlor. “Our imagination is the only thing that limits us really and we don’t let it do that. The Beatles never played Sgt. Pepper’s live, but it’s a fantastic record and I’m glad they did that. The truth is when we started, we wanted it to be whatever we could imagine it to be. We just made it work. The raw passion for the music kind of takes over when you play it live. You don’t worry about playing it how it is on the record. It’s more about what feels right. We like it to be a living thing, we like it to change from show to show. When the audience is in the room with you it takes you to a whole different place anyway and you can’t really tune that in when you’re in the studio. That’s what works for us. When we’re creating stuff we’re not limited by anything other than our imagination. We’ll worry about playing live when we get there. That’s how we started. Now it’s a little bit different, but there aren’t any strict rules for it. But that’s how it was when we started, whatever we wanted it to be, was what it was going to be.”

Whatever Electric Touch has wanted it to be has turned into an interesting combination of rock and pop. Recently the group opened up for Evanescence on a tour, now they’ve turned around and are hitting the road with Hot Chelle Rae. That’s a big contrast in bands to tour with. Asking Lawlor how the band’s able to pull it off, he responded.

“We’ve thought about that a lot actually,” said Lawlor. “As far as the band goes, it has very ‘poppy’ moments and then it has very ‘rocky’ moments and everywhere in between. People like to see a good show and we put on a good show. Whatever the stage is and whatever the audience is we do our thing and we give it everything we’ve got. The common thing that runs through with those two bands is they put on a good show and their fans are excited to see them and we have the opportunity to meet a lot of those fans and play for them. We love playing and if there’s an audience there, whether it’s 10 or 10,000 we’re going to put on the best show we can do. Really it’s just a great opportunity to get out there and inform some people about Electric Touch and put on some great shows.”

Electric Touch On Tour Now w/ Hot Chelle Rae (For Complete dates and purchase links, visit http://www.facebook.com/electrictouch

2/14 Denver, CO
2/15 Salt Lake City, UT
2/20 San Francisco, CA
2/22 Anaheim, CA
2/23 San Diego, CA
2/25 Hollywood, CA
3/24 Fort Lauderdale, FL
3/25 Tampa, FL
3/26 Jacksonville, FL
3/28 Dallas, TX
3/28 Austin, TX