ALBUM REVIEW: Shame - Cutthroat

Ian Curtis, Mark. E. Smith and Joe Strummer walk into a bar. There’s no punchline to that, they just probably sat and wrote Shame’s new album 'Cutthroat'. You can only really imagine it being written in a bar, in a notebook that’s been forgotten since primary school, the cartoon images blurred by sticky beer rings, smudging the longing for drugs and bright lights into the disgust at politicians and estate agents. The night becomes hazy, as the album becomes brilliant. 

Photo Credit: Jamie Wdziekonski

Shame open with the title track 'Cutthroat', a sweaty, boisterous, post-punk melting pot of fun, hedonistic and impulsive with fantasies of “beautiful naked women fall[ing] out the sky” and a recognition that they were “born to die”. 

There is a youthful confusion about the album, longing for the pleasure of an all consuming relationship in 'To and Fro' whilst shrinking from the dangers of intense passion in 'Quiet Life'. They are unashamed about their pursuit of meaning, condemning those whose life is nothing but their right hand and the internet in 'Do Nothing' and those whose existence doesn’t stretch beyond Savile Row in 'Axis of Evil'. Shame sit and observe, muttering at the masses who walk by, attempting to create a Frankenstein- like identity from the bits they despise the least. 

The sound of the album is no different, taking the synth of Jockstrap or Adult DVD, layering it below the grit of Beastie Boys or Squid and adding the yearning of Billy Bragg or Daniel Johnston. It is the smudged off stamp that got you into a gig the night before, it is sitting in the passenger seat of a car going too fast, it is nostalgic and yet frighteningly modern, frazzled yet brilliantly constructed. 

And it was probably written on a whirlwind night, in a dingy bar, with some of the greats.