5 keepers
keeper avg .500
Shame's debut album starts powerfully with the menacing stomp of "Dust on Trial"****; with some jarring breaks in the middle-eight it's a good sign of the wild ride to come. Not being able to pin down a band's influences is probably a good thing; I can reference the melodic runs of the Dead Kennedys or Joy Division and the spacious reverb-y sound of Ride or the more contemporary Savages (with a general approach somewhere in-between), but at their best Shame somehow manages to combine the best features of all of these bands while not really sounding like any of them.
The next three tracks basically define the parameters of the album. The fast-driving "Concrete"****, featuring tag-team vocals from lead Charlie Steen and guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, is delivered at Wire or Buzzcocks speed. Guitar provides the wistful melody to aid Steen's speak-sing on the poppy "One Rizla"**** (the "I'm not much to look at, And I ain't much to hear" song). And Josh Finerty provides the swaggering Fugazi or Gang Of Four bass line for the deliberate, sinister "The Lick"****, which features the hilarious suggestion to:
"Sit in the corner of your room, and download the next greatest track to your MP3 device
So sincerely recommended to you by the New Musical Express
You can pick it up, Plug it in, and have it ready for free-roaming material before you know it
Then you can stroll on round to your friend’s house and play it LOUD and PROUD" (Steen really hits those two words).
Fittingly enough the album's middle tracks bounce around the middle ground between the preceding tracks, like serviceable rockers "Tasteless" and "Friction" (the "I like you better when you're not around" song), with the noisy, angrily chugging "Donk" thrown in for kicks; "Gold Hole" and "Lampoon" simply reiterate previous points, "Dust In Trial" and "Concrete" respectively. But before shuffling off the band closes with the album's most restrained track "Angie"****, a sincere and poignant elegy, and pretty good pop rocker despite its morose subject matter.
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