shame

shame's 'Cutthroat', an unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen) at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.

Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends - Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes - have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.

Musically the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for Shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.

Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song Shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.

The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.