Review Summary: There’s no shame in getting a bit softer with age
Despite their youth, Shame are somehow already veterans within their scene, having formed as far back as 2014 and released their debut LP in early 2018, a solid year before most of the other big names associated with the current post-Brexit wave of British post-punk bands. Even if Shame don’t quite fit the same diverse and experimental mold of the other bigs in this scene such as Squid, Black Midi, or Black Country, New Road, and nor do they have quite as distinctive a style and approach as a band like Dry Cleaning, 2018’s
Songs of Praise can now be fairly well identified as a ground zero for the movement that has earned so much hype in the last several years. A very solid set of accessible, indie rock-flavored post-punk tunes, their debut paved the way for 2021’s
Drunk Tank Pink, an album which saw the band really come into their own by focusing on powerful, hard-hitting rhythms while also finding the space for more intense, drawn-out songwriting. A superb sophomore effort, all things considered, even if Shame had already become relatively overshadowed by some of the newer kids on the block.
In contrast to the intensity of
Drunk Tank Pink, the band’s third album
Food for Worms finds them retreating inward, not entirely dropping the post-punk and post-hardcore flavors of their first two efforts but showing an even greater level of melodicism and melancholy as well as an appreciation for turn of the millennium indie rock and emo. The instrumental palette has broadened, the arrangements colored in places by pianos and acoustic guitars, as well as playing with a wider range of guitar textures, and incorporating more prominent backing vocals (they even find time to cover the requisite square on seemingly every indie artist’s Bingo board these days by having a Phoebe Bridgers vocal feature, though her contribution is all but unidentifiable). All of these elements serve only to highlight the band’s strength as a
band, allowing them to demonstrate a greater level of looseness and interplay than ever before. It is a particular delight to listen to how the band’s two guitar players play off each other, the times where they play complementing lines serving to add even more power to the moments where they come fully together. Josh Finerty’s bass work and Charlie Forbes’ drumming are also in strong form here, always providing solid grounding for these tracks and occasionally taking center stage themselves, such as on the awesomely groovy bass riff that rips through “Different Person.”
Even if
Food for Worms is frequently notably softer than previous Shame material, it is far from a complete departure, with hard-hitting noise rockers such as “The Fall of Paul,” “Alibis,” and the aforementioned “Different Person” providing great variety to proceedings. The single “Six-Pack” is also a standout with its heavy psychedelic guitars. But many of the album’s standout moments are those one might not have expected following the band’s previous releases, such as the dejected, lamenting “Adderall” with its strikingly pained guitars, the desolate “Burning By Design,” and the closing “All the People.” The lattermost is a pleading anthem, a very obvious song in many ways but undeniably effective as it builds to its choruses which practically beg the listener to sing along. Although
Food for Worms may not work as well for fans who fell for the band’s first two albums, and indeed it is not quite as consistently striking as
Drunk Tank Pink, nonetheless it shows Shame maturing (hopefully not prematurely) into great songwriters who are willing to stretch themselves enough to keep things from stagnating.
