Shame - Cutthroat Review
A concise punch to the gut with just the right amount of doubt.
“Great live show guys, have you got anything recorded?”
It’s the punch to your gut, the question from the man in the next door urinal cutting your life to ribbons with one sentence. It’s what has plagued every South London Band™ since the dawn of time (2015). How do you manage the jump from a buzzy and messy live show to recorded music that not only captures that energy, but contains something with depth and meaning that merits attention beyond a cursory first listen?
It’s a step that cuts the wheat from the chaff, and decides who’s actually got the legs to carve out a career and who’s destined for a year of sordid post punk squalor before “things have just got really busy at work recently.”
Shame, on paper, should be prime fodder for this particular meat grinder. But then again they are no strangers to confounding expectations. Each of their three previous records has revealed greater depths to their talent and character without getting fuddled in a headspin of pretentiousness or self imposed grandiosity. Cutthroat, the band’s fourth full length offering, is this balancing act distilled into an art form.
This album is not here to fuck around. Even the title and the album cover show a band that has a very clear idea of who they are and what they want to do. The opener and titular track is Shame at their brazen best. Reinvigorated by their recent tour with Viagra Boys in the U.S, the track condenses this inspiration into a rollicking three minutes of swaggering, dirty machismo with a chorus reminiscent of Blur at their campy best. It’s immediate, chest out, bollocks first music with enough pop sensibility to keep you coming back for more.
This type of ironic gun-kissing pit mover has always been Shame’s simplest and strongest card to play, but it’s the deck it covers that has always yielded the most rewards. Underneath the tight and punchy post punk anthems, they have increasingly managed to balance bravado with the fragility it hides. Tracks such as ‘Quiet Life’ and ‘Spartak’ have a chugging melancholy that is almost reminiscent of The Smiths, and not dissimilar from the sweeping guitar-driven pensiveness that has made contemporaries Fontaines DC a household name. It remains to be seen whether Shame ever makes a similar leap from post punk upstarts to your hip stepdad’s poster boys for saving guitar music, but it's a moot point. On Cutthroat, the melancholy is presented up front in a well-fitted suit, a crisp simplicity that gives it a credence that is hard to find.
Shame’s certainty in what they do could easily be misconstrued as one dimensional; in fact, it's the opposite. Their commitment to curveballs and amalgamating all manner of influences and instrumentation into their own voice is one of their greatest skills - and this has never been as apparent as on stand out track ‘Lampião’. A Brazilian folk inspired alt country song, it uses both Portuguese and English to detail the downfall of a seedy South American bandit, stylistically a tight modern homage to the tales of Nick Cave that really should feel out of place. It’s a testament to how streamlined the band is in both concept and delivery that it makes perfect sense.
Shame are masters of playing both sides. They have captured the corner of angsty boppy sadness better than most without losing the (sense of) adventure and depth that is lacking from many of their contemporaries. It’s adolescent frustration without giving into the tempting pull of melodrama, as hopeful as it is cathartic, as frustrated as it is frayed. Cutthroat delivers an attitude that punches you in the face then takes you for a pint afterwards to delve into your demons.