Shame are traditionalists. No, wrong. Shame know about the importance of traditions. For example, “Quiet Life” and “Spartak”, the two best songs on their fourth album, are carefully elaborated greeting cards to the most varied varieties in the broadest sense of agitator music – from Bobby Fuller to Billy Bragg to the broken side of the Britpop. Shame also know about the importance of broken tradition.
Recommendations of the editorial team
That is why you consistently follow the previously taken way with Cutthroat and open up more complex sound textures-in some places, for example in the oscillating final track “Axis of Evil”, which is somewhere between LO-FI and Depeche Mode, and even electronic structures shimmer through.
This step is exemplary for musical growth that has been traced since the rough debut Songs of Praise (2018). What has remained the same is the Ennui: Frontmann Charlie Steen SingingPrions with recognizable discomfort against the circumstances. In “To & Fro” the motivation behind it is explained exactly: “I Don’t Wanna Be this and I Don’t Wanna be that”, he sings here, later: “I ain’t got a good voice but it Don’t meaning in a song in a song.” We understood.
This review first appeared in the MusikExpress 09/2025.