There are moments on Drunk Tank Pink where you almost have to reach for the sleeve to check this is the same band who made 2018’s Songs Of Praise. Such is the jump Shame have made from the riotous post-punk of their debut to the sprawling adventurism and twitching anxieties laid out here. The South Londoner’s blood and guts spirit, that wink and grin of devious charm, is still present, it’s just that it’s grown into something bigger, something deeper, more ambitious and unflinchingly honest.
The genius of Drunk Tank Pink is how these lyrical themes dovetail with the music. Opener Alphabet dissects the premise of performance over a siren call of nervous, jerking guitars, its chorus thrown out like a beer bottle across a mosh pit. Songs spin off and lurch into unexpected directions throughout here, be it March Day’s escalating aural panic attack or the shapeshifting darkness of Snow Day. There’s a Berlin era Bowie beauty to the lovelornHuman For A Minutewhile closer Station Wagon weaves from a downbeat mooch into a souring, soul- lifting climax in which Steen elevates himself beyond the clouds and into the heavens. Or at least that’s what it sounds like.
From the womb to the clouds (sort of), Shame are currently very much in the pink. At five-minutes-plus, shame come out with a pretty epic white-out on ‘Snow Day’, the latest track to be taken from their forthcoming second album ‘Drunk Tank Pink’, which is set to arrive on January 15th 2021 via Dead Oceans.
Charlie Steen’s sombre opening soon moves into familiar menacing territory, carried by Charlie Forbes‘ formidable drumming, and the sharp, post-punk guitar riffs which dig like ice picks, dictating the flow. Tense and propulsive, Steen’s lyrics dovetail with the music, from its reflective opening to the power of its highest points. “A lot of this album focuses on the subconscious and dreams,” explains Steen, “this song being the pivotal moment of these themes. A song about love that is lost and the comfort and displeasure that comes after you close your eyes, fall into sleep, and are forced to confront yourself.”
Alongside, the band have shared accompanying visuals featuring drone footage shot in the Scottish Borders – where the band wrote ‘Drunk Tank Pink’ – and the stark, snow-covered hills make a befitting backdrop for the atmospheric build of the track.
The band have also announced they will perform a live set from Rough Trade Records on January 14 2021.
“Snow Day” taken from shame’s new album ‘Drunk Tank Pink’, out 15 January 2021 on Dead OceansRecords.
Like most Shame songs, “Alphabet” is armed with full-throttle momentum, and frontman Charlie Steen’s direct yet playful vocal inflection. “Are you waiting / to feel good / Are you praying / like you should?” Steen asks. It’s not so much a sonic departure as it is a distillation of their barreling punk sound. Shame have returned with a new song called ‘Alphabet’ via Dead Oceans Records. Produced by James Ford, it marks the UK post-punk group’s first new music since the release of their 2018 debut Songs of Praise. Check it out below, alongside an accompanying music video directed by Tegen Williams.
“‘Alphabet’ is a direct question, to the audience and the performer, on whether any of this will ever be enough to reach satisfaction,” frontman Charlie Steen said in a statement. “At the time of writing it, I was experiencing a series of surreal dreams where a manic subconscious was bleeding out of me and seeping into the lyrics. All the unsettling and distressing imagery I faced in my sleep have taken on their own form in the video.”
Back in the beginning of 2018, the British post-punk group Shame released their debut album . They soon accrued a fervent following and a whole lot of attention for their intense live shows. They’ve also now been silent for a while, not releasing so much as a standalone single since Songs Of Praise. Shame apparently have a new album on the horizon, and they’ve shared the first hint of this impending new era.
Two years ago, Shame released Songs of Praise, which was not just an outstanding debut but one of the best LPs of the 2010s. It was bold, assertive, and relevant. Heck, it still remains a very pertinent record, as many of the themes covered then still apply today. The timeless quality in Shame’s songwriting and post-punk style positions Eddie Green, Charlie Forbes, Josh Finerty, Sean Coyle-Smith, and Charlie Steen to be one of 2020’s most important bands. To demonstrate why they are worthy of such accolades, the quintet have unleashed a roaring critique of ourselves with “Alphabet”.
The song echoes the driving, raw energy of IDLES and Fontaines D.C. Every element is delivered with the desperation of a person about to perform their very last song. Nothing is held back because there is nothing left for us to lose in these times. Or is there? As the trio of guitars chime and thrust while the rhythms heavily pound, Green harshly and sarcastically asks us if “we feel good”. He’s asking us if we are satisfied with what we have, where we are, and what is happening. He’s directly wondering whether our desires are limitless or whether we all have a point where we say “enough is enough”.
Alphabet’ from Shame, available now on Dead Oceans
It’s hard to do Shame any justice by writing about their wild live shows. The way I can best summarize the aftermath of going to see Shame is that you’ll suddenly feel like you’ve been christened with the ability to perform some act of superhuman physical strength. Though the melodic, fervent post-punk of their debut album Songs of Praise needs no polite introduction, it’s not an angry “in your face,” it’s more like an “in your face” that’s beaming with happiness and with an overflowing passion that can’t be depleted. Their sweaty, bare-chested frontman Charlie Steen’s stamina and powerful presence is felt, but it’s not overbearing. He consistently reminds the crowd, “Smile! This is entertainment” while bassist Josh Finerty engages in a comical gymnastics routine and guitarist Sean Coyle-Smith embodies his guitar’s vigorous shredding with a similar vibrating fit of energy. By this point, Steen is an experienced crowd-surfer and as long as his motor is running, expect the unexpected at a Shame show.
Shame performing live in the KEXP studio. Recorded February 20th, 2018.
Songs: Dust On Trial Concrete One Rizla Friction The Lick
Shame thrives on confrontation. Whether it be the seething intensity crackling throughout their debut LP “Songs of Praise” or the adrenaline-pumping chaos that unfolds at Shame’s live shows, “Of the 70 bands I saw at this year’s festivals the band Shame seemed to mean what they played more than any other.”
Comprised of vocalist Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist John Finerty, and drummer Charlie Forbes, the London-based five-piece began as school boys. From the outset, Shame built the band up from a foundation of DIY ethos while citing The Fall and Wire among its biggest musical influences.
Utilizing both the grit and sincerity of that musical background, Shame carved out a niche in the South London music scene and then barreled fearlessly into the angular, thrashing post-punk that would go on to make up Songs of Praise, their Dead Ocean Records debut. Think tightly wound, jittery guitars, mile-a-minute hi-hat and an exquisite bleakness from “Gold Hole,” a tongue-in-cheek takedown of rock narcissism, to lead single “Concrete” a song about an unhappy relationship that will have you beating on your steering wheel, It embodies this sound perfectly and already gives us hope for the best of 2018. The song detailing the overwhelming moment of realizing a relationship is doomed, to the frustrated “Tasteless” taking aim at the monotony of people droning through their day-to-day, Songs of Praise never pauses to catch its breath.
Songs of Praise, the debut record from South London post punk titans Shame, couldn’t have received a better response on its release in January. Lauded for their political, sometimes aggressive and always lively punk-blues, Shame are riding high on their success, but trying to keep level headed. “We try to walk the tightrope between praising ourselves and degrading ourselves, because we don’t want to lean too far either side. We’re just enjoying the flame while it flickers!” says singer and lyricist Charlie Steen.
Steen is full of ideas, quick to laugh and with an anecdote fit for every occasion. So it’s unsurprising that he’s a lyricist, eager to put a story to everything and with the sharp wit required to make every story enticing. For Steen, the key to a good song is a gripping narrative, Bob Dylan and Squeeze rank highly on his list of music’s best storytellers and are among many of the musicians he first heard via his parents’ record collection.
Shame thrives on confrontation. Whether it be the seething intensity crackling throughout debut LP Songs of Praise or the adrenaline-pumping chaos that unfolds at Shame’s shows, it’s all fuelled by feeling.
Comprised of vocalist Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist John Finerty, and drummer Charlie Forbes, the London-based five-piece began as school boys. From the outset, Shame built the band up from a foundation of DIY ethos while citing The Fall and Wire among its biggest musical influences. Utilizing both the grit and sincerity of that musical background, Shame carved out a niche in the South London music scene and then barreled fearlessly into the angular, thrashing post-punk that would go on to make up Songs of Praise, their Dead Oceans debut. From Gold Hole, a tongue-in-cheek takedown of rock narcissism, to lead single Concrete detailing the overwhelming moment of realizing a relationship is doomed, to the frustrated Tasteless taking aim at the monotony of people droning through their day-to- day.
The notion, however, that a scrappy post-punk band may have to deal with old-school rock stardom isn’t as far-fetched as it seems. They’re as ferocious as their acknowledged inspirations the Fall; even when the guitars aren’t turned up to a jet roar, Steen’s furious sneer gives them urgency (“My voice ain’t the best you’ve heard / And you can choose to hate my words / But do I give a fuck?” he asks on One Rizla). Best of all, though, they have huge, anthemic tunes to go with the anger.
I think the idea of the leather jacket-wearing, womanising, drug-fuelled rock star should be burned,” says CharlieSteen, the 20-year-old singer of Shame, who are 2018’s angriest, shoutiest young British guitar band.
“Destroyed for ever,” says the 21-year-old drummer, Charlie Forbes. “But at the same time,” adds Sheen, “with a lot of people I’ve grown up loving, like Bowie or Iggy Pop, there’s an attraction to someone who lives a lifestyle you’ll never be able to live, and you couldn’t live, because it’s so dysfunctional and damaging to you as a person. You can almost live your life through them.”
Steen thinks for a moment, then outlines the simple reason why Shame won’t become rock stars. “That lifestyle could only exist because of money. Bands can’t go out now and get a kilo of coke or drive to Las Vegas in a Ferrari. Now it’s get a gram of speed and sit in a Travelodge. That’s the reality of it.”.
Shame formed when the five members were in their mid-teens and bumped along anonymously for a while, part of a nascent south London scene of bands drawn together through mutual friends that also included HMLTD, GoatGirl and Dead Pretties. Over the past year, all four bands transcended their free-party origins, getting signed, getting acclaimed and forming the nucleus of something that’s been missing in British music for some time: an exciting, youthful guitar scene whose participants are not grimly fixated on securing their slice of the post-Britpop lads-with-lagers crowd.
The scene, they say, was more the result of necessity than anything else: when few of their friends liked guitar bands, those who did would group together. “It was weird to meet people the same age as you who liked the same music,” Steen says. “Lots of people we knew at school were into popping pills and going to techno nights. But then we started meeting these people who were engaged with something we didn’t think existed.”
Shame formed around the Queen’s Head pub in Brixton, the former headquarters of the Fat White Family. Forbes’s dad was a friend of the landlord, who let the young band rehearse in an upstairs room (“Every day,” Forbes says. “Just hop on the bus to the after school club”). There they met assorted luminaries and recidivists of the south London music scene, but managed to avoid the worst excesses of the Fat Whites and their friends, largely through being too young to realise they were hanging around with committed hard drug users (“We were oblivious,” Forbes says).
They stumbled over lucky break after lucky break. Not just getting a free rehearsal space for 15 months, until the Queen’s Head was converted into a gastropub, but meeting people who then gave them studio space, and getting free advice from musicians who had been chewed up and spat out by major labels. What they learned was the importance of keeping as much control as possible over their decisions, which led them to sign to indie imprint DeadOceans for their debut album, Songs of Praise. They also think the very grime of the Queen’s Head shaped them into being Shame: “I don’t think if we had started in a squeaky clean studio it would have been the same,” Forbes says.
They are less interested in offering comfort than demanding resolve: “We like to confront those who have committed acts of injustice, by writing snippy songs about them,” Forbes says. Just before last year’s general election they released one such song about the prime minister, Visa Vulture. “With each day the vacuous Mrs May steers our country closer and closer into the darkness and confusion that is Brexit, no doubt securing the best deal for herself and her cronies in the Conservative party,” they wrote on YouTube. “We would like to take this opportunity to humiliate and debase her frankly evil political record even further with this, the world’s worst love song.”
But given they’re still so young – all five members are 20 or 21 – they sometimes haven’t worked out where their principles are taking them. So there’s a mild disagreement between Forbes and Steen over whether they would let their music be used in a TV advert by some particularly awful company.
“No chance,” Forbes says. “No chance.” Then Steen recalls the Fat Whites turning down £100,000 from easyJet. “They wanted to use Whitest Boy on the Beach. Lias [Saoudi, the Fat Whites’ singer] said the biggest mistake of his life was not taking the hundred grand. But until we have to make that decision …”
Forbes interrupts, surprised that Steen is deciding band policy on his own. “Oh no, there’s no way.”
“Not with Primark or something,” Steen says. “But I’m not going to exclude everything. I would find it funny to have tequila flavour Bud Light playing one of our songs.”
The pair keep taking extreme positions, then realising they have to pull back from them, that their principles are racing away from practicality. When asked how they will respond when their crowd starts to include the beered-up geezers who tend to follow popular and boisterous guitar bands, Forbes says: “If I ever looked down from the stage and saw that, I would probably quit.”
Steen interrupts: “We wanna get rid and dissolve …” Forbes interrupts back: “Dissolve is too nice a word. Incinerate.”
And then Steen realises that suggesting pre-emptive incineration of their fans is, perhaps, a bit much. “We’re not going to discriminate against any person who comes to our show unless they do something unjust. But we don’t want to project any image of laddish behaviour. I’ve spoken to girls who feel that if they go into the pit they are going to get knocked about by older guys. And when that happens, you have to make a point to the crowd. We don’t want to stop anyone having fun, but we don’t want anyone to be hurt or harassed in any way.”
Their instinct for confrontation might make that a tightrope act. In one French TV appearance Steen, dressed in a T-shirt reading “Je suis Calais”, strutted across the presenters’ table and licked an audience member’s face – pick the wrong person for that, and he might well find himself called out on social media for the very things Forbes says the band want to avoid.
It’s oddly charming listening to a band working out what they think as they go along. For all the apparent certainties of Songs of Praise, for all their reputation for provocation – and the thrilling, tumbling rush of their music – they are very well aware of the limitations of being a rock band and of how damaging to mind and body it could be.
Last month, as Shame finished their year with a jaunt around Germany as a support slot, Steen had to call a stop to things. He was getting panic attacks; he wasn’t digesting his food; he was vomiting 15 times a day. “In that month we toured America, Canada, I did eight press days in Europe and London, played a show in Paris and then went on tour in Germany. Sitting in a van in the pitch black, and you’re in Hanover surrounded by snow and nothing else, and there’s only indistinguishable meat available … it can get you down.”
Over the next 12 months, Shame will take Songs of Praise around the world, to more and more people who will force them to confront their self-image as the band who are against things, whatever things happen to be on their minds. A band this exciting aren’t going to be allowed to sit still for long – in the weeks before they go to Australia at the end of January they are writing for their second album, because there will be no chance once the touring begins. They had better get used to the idea of more cans, more pitch black and even more indistinguishable meat, and not just in Hanover.
So might they become rock stars after all? Forbes suggests the very notion is “quite incredibly dated”, and Steen chips in. “Offensive as well, in a lot of ways. It will be a white male, skinny, perfect hair, who sleeps with women daily.”
That’s your principled position – but wouldn’t you really like to be rock stars, given the chance? “I’d just like a house with a pool table,” Steen says.
Songs of Praise is released on Dead Oceans on 12th January.
The Fat Angel Sings 