"Everywhere, Everything" by Noah Kahan can be a good theme song for DPS. Do you agree with me?

shame The Sinclair, Cambridge, MA 16 May 2023 article + full gallery here

shame Food for Worms 2023

“We are all food for worms, my lad.”

Available at www.goodcaptainandco.com

all the people that you're gonna meet don't you throw it all away because you can't love yourself oh, when you're smiling and you're looking at me a life without that in is a life I can't lead

Food For Worms by shame Artwork by Marcel Dzama

Food for worms by shame is a 10/10!!

Shame - Food For Worms

Ce ne stavamo dimenticando qua, ma come se la passa il post punk revival? Il terzo album degli Shame ce lo racconta piuttosto bene...

Etichetta: Dead OceansPaese: UKAnno: 2023 Continue reading Untitled

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Food For Worms, Shame (2023)

Everyone keeps telling me that this new Shame record sees the band do much less boring shouty pub rock stuff, but I’m not sure that’s true. For all I can tell (or care to tell), it’s pretty much exactly the same stuff – the same vocal delivery, same songwriting, same chords – as before.

Pick: ‘Fingers of Steel’

Live Review: Shame at New Century Hall in Manchester 11 March 2023

Words: Andy Hughes Saturday night in Manchester and our heart is being tugged in two different directions (a third if you count staying at home and talking to the dog all night). Off Oxford Road, upstairs in the Pink Room at YES, Welsh artist H. Hawkline would be celebrating the release of his latest album ‘Milk For Flowers‘, whilst up the road at New Century Hall, Southerners Shame were set to…

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I get joy from the stupidest things. Bc a Silverstein-esque drawings of a rat shitting itself into jet propulsion should not be this entertaining.

And yet I laugh.

Shame - Food For Worms

Third album of guitar-based indie rock from the Brixton-based quintet includes a guest appearance from Phoebe Bridgers

7/13

Shame works best in generalities. On the British quintet’s debut, Songs of Praise, their strengths weren’t the locked-in post-punk songs they were best known for, but the full-blown indie-rock anthems that were overwhelmed in Oasis-esque reverb. Even their biggest song, “One Rizla,” underlines this weird dichotomy. There’s a little angst to be found in the tune’s chorus (”If you think I love you, you got the wrong idea,” sings Steen), but the important part is Shame’s surprising restraint. For a band who arose from a scene filled with abstractions and strangeness in every song, Shame’s best quality is how straight they play it.

That simplicity is also a double-edged sword. Fairly often, Shame ends up in a sonic no-man’s-land, unable to stick the landing for their sticky post-punk songs. Aside from “Water in the Well” or Talking Heads-inspired “Born in Lutton” off their sophomore album, Drunk Tank Pink, Shame is a band who finds themselves to be less than the sum of their parts. There’s the appearances of bongos, shouted and clean vocals, sudden tempo shifts, but oftentimes these choices don’t stick together like you’d want. That’s not to mention Steen’s lyrics, which lean juvenile or plain even on the strongest songs. Even on “Angie,” the steady, excellent closer of Shame’s debut record, there’s a handful of clunkers: “We will stay in your happy place” is the song’s final line.

On their new album, Food for Worms, Shame tries to obscure the awkward fact that for a post-punk band, they’re not the best at post-punk. But their washed-out rock songs are outstanding, finding new ground between their melancholic indie rock tendencies and the undercurrent of angst that propels the songs forward. “Fingers of Steel” starts the album beautifully, anchored around a thumping piano and Steen’s snotty, empathic singing. “There’s a sun outside, but you don’t see it,” he sings, with the background vocals underlining the words “see it.” But the song really takes flight when the drums drop out for the chorus and atmosphere thrives solely on grandiose harmonies. Complete with a noisy guitar solo that compliments the song’s overarching feel wonderfully, “Fingers of Steel” is designed to catch the listener off-guard, even if at some points it’s more The National than The Fall.

The opening half of Food for Worms is split between exhausting punk ragers and introspective indie-rock numbers. “Yankees,” with its half-hearted opening and simmering distorted guitars, creates an applaudable sense of suspense. By the time the chorus erupts with Steen singing “All those things you said to me, it was enough,” it’s a superb moment of revolve on a song that is focused on ambiance. But directly prior to “Yankees” is “Six-Pack,” the platonic example of an overextended Shame song. Over wah-wah’d out guitars and a relentlessly tiring groove, Steen cleverly sings about the ways we distract ourselves from our flaws: “Those bananas and vegetables you hated previously, you love ’em in this room.” Complete with a jazzy breakdown in the song’s back half, “Six-Pack” toggles between amusing themes and taxing instrumentation. The band manage to nail the balance on “Alibis,” where Steen’s deliberately elliptical lyrics are backed by a solidly chaotic blast of noise.

“Different Person” is the penultimate slow burn, a wiry display of ringing guitar chords and restless bass grooves. “You can change your friends / But you’re still the same to me,” Steen deadpans before the song concludes with a chord progression that could be from a Supertramp song if Supertramp liked layering their melodies with wailing guitar leads. It’s on songs like “Adderall” or the acoustic-guitar-driven “Orchard” where Steen and co. expand upon their tunefulness. The intrigue of an acoustic Shame song is only emphasized by Steen’s heartbroken, passive vocals: “We were lovers in regression,” he sings on “Orchard” as if he’s looking off into space, not focusing on what he was intending to say.

With Food for Worms, Shame does manage to reach new heights on the closer, a winding, Glastonbury-sized anthem entitled “All the People.” Much of the song is buoyed by the moving instrumentation, as the lyrics lean towards being vague and silly. “All the people that you’re gonna meet / Don’t you throw it all away because you can’t love yourself” isn’t a particularly inspiring sentiment, but it’s the slightly untuned, scraping guitars combined with Steen’s lackadaisical vocals that makes the chorus touching. When simple drums and harmonies appear during the second verse, it transforms into a monumentally bittersweet song. But the band keeps pushing, sustaining momentum for nearly six minutes, finally arriving at the album’s single transcendent moment just as it ends: “When you’re smiling and you’re looking at me / A life without that is a life I cannot lead.” Placed at the end of an album that doesn’t ever fully cohere, “All the People” is the best song Shame has released yet.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/shame/shame-food-for-worms-review/

shame - Six-Pack

Everything you see Is free, within this room.

And your ex-wife and ex-daughter, Who hate your guts to death. They love you, Within this room.

Everything within this room was made just for you, Chattels of deception are only good when they’re in use. The outside world is large and it’s filled with empty beds. Resort to your delusions and live within your head, Within this room. Within this room.

That brand new type of religion that you feared too much to try, Will hold you tight Through the night, In this room.

Those bananas and vegetables that you hated previously, You love ’em, Within this room.

And now you got a six pack, Now you’ve got a six pack.

Now you’ve got a puppy. Now you’ve got a tan. Now you’ve got Pamela Anderson reading you a bedtime story, And every scratch card is a fucking winner.

Well, you’ve done time behind bars, And now you’re making time in front of them. But you know you’ll never leave this room, And this room will never leave you. You’re just a creature of bad habit, You’ve got nothing and no-one to live for. But you’ve got this room, And guess what? This room has got you.

01/03/2023