Review Summary: 70s AC/DC meets early Buckcherry, with solid, if unspectacular, results.
As universal an art form as music is, certain genres or sub-genres still find themselves inseparably associated to certain geographic locations, whether they be whole countries (Norway with black metal or Brazil with samba,
forró, axé and bossa nova), specific states or regions (California with 90s punk-pop) or individual cities (Stockholm with melodeath or London with 70s punk). This association, in turn, leads listeners to expect
any music coming from that specific area to fall within its respective genre, causing any artist deviating from the norm to be met with at least a modicum of surprise by the general public.
Seattle is a perfect example of this. Ever since a bunch of scraggly misfits put it on the musical map during the first half of the 1990s, the Washington state capital has been inextricably associated with their style of choice – the murky, downbeat strand of that era's alternative rock which eventually became known as 'grunge'. Since then, any guitar-driven act coming out of the rainy, industrial city is expected to hang their hat on the same fuzzed-out, perpetually depressed alt-rock peg that first made their forebears famous.
And yet, as bands like New American Shame clearly demonstrate(d), there is far more to the Washington rock scene than mere 1990s revivalism. For, rather than following along the expected lines, the Auburn five-piece instead chose to present a look and sound that was as far removed from the Washington rock norm as possible. Image-wise, the band fell somewhere between Detroit and Los Angeles, with about half of the band's members looking like rejects from Buckcherry by way of Motley Crue, and the rest being the sort of rough-looking, beefed-up working-class Average Joe usually found discussing the latest in distortion pedals behind the counter at a guitar shop. Sonically, their influences stretched even further, venturing past the Sunset Strip and across the Pacific Ocean to Australia, spawning ground of another working-class five piece some twenty-five years prior.
Indeed, much like Wolfmother a few years later, New American Shame takes a single influence and apes it so closely and so thoroughly that they end up coming across as little more than second-rate impersonators. For, as much as the band's Wiki page talks of Aerosmith, Black Sabbath and Jimi Hendrix, none of these acts is so much as hinted at throughout the 45 and a half minutes of the band's one and only release; rather, where the Australians in Wolfmother dipped into the early days of American hard rock to bring Led Zeppelin's sound into the new millennium, the Americans in Shame go the opposite route, dipping into the early days of Aussie hard rock for their one main influence – antipodean heroes AC/DC, circa
Powerage / Highway To Hell. From the unmistakable Gibson SG crunch to the staccato percussion work to the raspily croaked backing vocals, the band recreate every last trope of the band's sound to utter perfection. In fact, the sound is so close that listeners who did not know any better would not be blamed for thinking any of these twelve songs was an unreleased late-70s AC/DC cut, given a new production job ahead of its inclusion in a Dacca rarities box.
There is only one problem with that approach, however – unlike Led Zeppelin, who were disbanded, sorely missed, and probably never reuniting, AC/DC were still active at the time their only album was released. Not only that, but they would put out a new record less than a year after
New American Shame, thus adding a fairly solid entry to their already vast catalogue – which, unlike Shame's, would continue to expand into the next two decades. With the genuine article alive and well, there was very little room for a second-rate copycat re-hash, explaining why Paulson and company were consigned to the same fate as Rhino Bucket, AB/CD, or any other AC/DC sound-alike not name Krokus.
As such, and unlike their main influence, Jimmy Paulson and company would not enjoy a long and illustrious career as decades-spanning hard rock megastars; instead, and despite doing enough to attract the attention of major label Atlantic, they would join the far more populous ranks of the
almost-weres, disbanding a mere three years after coming together, and leaving a single, self-titled album as their only legacy. And considering said album was bargain-bin fodder as early as a year after the band's demise, it can be safely stated that it was not much of a legacy at all.
The reasons for this short and unfruitful lifespan are not at all hard to ascertain, mainly hinging on a combination of an unsuitable music climate and a highly derivative sound; simply put, while there was definitely room in turn-of-the-century America for a raw, gutsy, flag-waving hard rock band, New American Shame were just a touch too pedestrian to aspire to a place alongside the likes of Nickelback in college-radio playlists. The fact that they derived their main – and nearly
sole – influence from a band twenty years out of date at that point was the final nail in the band's coffin, at least where commercial success was concerned.
And yet, as mentioned previously, there is nothing fundamentally
wrong with the songs on the band's only album – either those culled from the original indie release or the four new ones recorded for the major-label reissue. Much to the contrary, in fact – the album as a whole makes for a remarkably even and eminently pleasant listening experience. New American Shame's sound was just too reminiscent of a better band to ever aspire to greatness.
Opener and only single
Under It All is a perfect example of this. Paulson and sidekick Terry Bratsch crib liberally from the Young and Young playbook, while bass player Kelly Wheeler and drummer Geoff Reading perfectly emulate Rudd and Williams' dry, precise rhythm work, laying the groundwork for single-named vocalist Johnny's uncanny impression of original Dacca yelper Bon Scott. The overall result comes across as an A- submission to an AC/DC 101 course – the sort of unspectacularly solid, no-frills, mid-tempo hard rock track most people immediately associate with the Young brothers' band.
To the opening track's credit, however, it does not directly ape any specific song, instead settling for simply sounding like a generic AC/DC track. The same, however, cannot be said of tracks like
Broken Bones or
Rather Be Rich, which
do make direct reference to songs like
Touch Too Much (the intro lead on the former) or
Dirty Deeds (the spoken-word section in the latter.) The ur-example of this tendency is third track
What's It To You, which is little more than a straight-up mash-up of AC/DC's two most famous bluesy tracks,
The Jack and
Night Prowler. Ironically, it also ends up being far and away the best song on the album – if only by virtue of basically being a re-work of existing songs by a better band.
As the album progresses, New American Shame do occasionally manage to break free of this sole influence; unfortunately, it is only so they can morph into a
different pre-existing band. The title track and
Sex Teen, for instance, see them turn into glammed-up, Motley Crue-worship-era Buckcherry, with Johnny trading his Bon Scott impersonation for a slightly less nasally approximation of Cherry singer Josh Todd; further along, the band turn back into AC/DC but forget to warn the singer, ending up sounding rather like Swiss veterans Krokus – themselves notorious for making a career out of being 'bootleg AC/DC'.
Unsurprisingly, this inability to create a unique sound ends up harming the band's efforts as a whole. Shame's one and only album is by no means a bad record – it maintains a consistently acceptable standard throughout, with the only unmemorable track coming right at the end, and serves up the kind of songs where the chorus immediately comes to mind just from looking at the title. The problem is, very little else
does come to mind until a good few listens in – other than the occasional witty lyric and the pervading memory of the band being a not-bad AC/DC ripoff. Similarly, while the album starts off fairly strong and has very few weaker points, it does not serve up anything particularly fantastic, either - none of the deeper cuts ever quite manage to reach the level of the single or
What's It To You, themselves only slightly above-average to begin with.
Still, listeners yearning for an AC/DC fix and who have exhausted their Rhino Bucket and Krokus discography could do worse than to give New American Shame a listen; the band were better than their artwork suggested (if not by much) and, in an age where processed angst was the flavor of the week, were at least commited to delivering raunchy, no-frills party rock'n'roll. It was (pardon the pun) a real Shame that circumstances played against them, as a second album just might have seen them become their own band, rather than the competent Acca-Dacca worship act they come across as here. 4/5 for the songwriting, with half a point docked for the openly derivative sound, adding up to a 3.5; good, but not great - much like the band themselves.
Recommended Tracks
Under It All
What's It To You
Rather Be Rich
