“…the London five-piece’s rawest, noisiest, most incendiary album so far.” – NME
On the new record, the south London band come out swinging with some of their most vicious and cutting music so far.” – Rolling Stone UK
“Crashing in with an urgent, alluring energy, shame’s return is here to blow the cobwebs away.” — DIY
Today, shame release their fourth and ‘most energetic and optimistic record to date’ (Dork), Cutthroat, via Dead Oceans. It’s shame at their blistering best–an unapologetic new album made with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm.
Also shared today is the new single “After Party”, which underpins frontman Charlie Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus. On the single, Steen said:
“After Party is a comical venture into lust and desire. It’s a satirical look at pleasure, and how you might never reach satisfaction when you chase it.”
It follows BBC 6 Music playlisted singles “Cutthroat” and “Quiet Life”, as well as “Spartak” which arrived alongside a Steen-directed music video. Singles from the album can be heard on the band’s recent BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2 and BBC 6 Music live sessions.
Tonight, the band will perform songs from the album at Rough Trade East, in partnership with the charity CALM. It will include The Wall of Shame, a “confession style” pinboard where fans can pin an item & write something vulnerable to raise awareness about mental health and body image. Steen explained: “This band was born out of embracing your insecurities. I only took my top off in the beginning because I was ashamed of my body. This is about embracing your shame.”
Still in their twenties and having proved themselves several times over since their 2018 debut, Songs of Praise, the five childhood friends – singer Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero. Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. Holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, 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. This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. 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. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.