Shame
★★★★
Food For Worms
SECRETLY CANADIAN. CD/DL/LP
South Londoners strike a balance between anthemic and cacophonous on third LP.
Shame’s 2018 debut, Songs Of Praise, was a riot of beer-splattered thrills that recalled Killing Joke, The Fall and the south Londoners’ nefarious mentors, Fat White Family. While the follow-up Drunk Tank Pink was a more claustrophobic knot of angst and angles that dealt with the psychological fall-out from plying five teenagers with booze and drugs and sticking them in the back of a van for two years, Food For Worms finds Shame striking a balance between the two. Tracks such as the thunderous Six-Pack or The Fall Of Paul might clang with dissonant noise or pinball off into a riot of machine gun rhythms, but it’s generally not at the expense of songs that a festival crowd could bellow back at them. It’s telling, perhaps, that the album’s best moments – the R.E.M.-like Orchid; Adderall, bittersweet alt-rock about anti-depressant dependency – are also its most straightforward, suggesting that Shame are at their most potent when they stand still for a moment.