Shame share new single ‘Adderall’
British post-punks Shame will return on Friday, February 24th, with their third studio album, Food For Worms. In one last preview of the upcoming LP, the band have released a brand new single, ‘Adderall’.
Here’s a fun game: it’s called ‘See If You Can Spot the Phoebe Bridgers Feature’. Bridgers, America’s current indie rock queen, recorded a contribution that appears somewhere on ‘Adderall’. Your mission is to find it. Is it in the song’s chant-along chorus section? Is there a hidden harmony floating around the main vocal track? The band is being a bit coy about where Bridgers is on the track, so we’re going to have to do a bit of investigative work.
“We thought the song [‘Adderall’] had an American edge to it and thought it would sound nice with a woman’s voice,” drummer Charlie Forbes explained in an interview with NME. “By chance, she was recording in the same studio as us, and one day we did a trade where Josh went and did some tambourine on her new track, and she came in and did the vocal line on our track – which you can’t actually hear at all.”
Part slow-burning ballad and part anthemic sing-along, ‘Adderall’ blends Shame’s signature sense of humour with a healthy slice of real-life darkness. As the track builds to a furious crescendo, singer Charlie Steen unleashes a throat-shredding rant about hiding behind drugs that cover up real problems. It’s a stark and sobering track that never gets preachy or judgmental, which seems like it’s a Shame speciality.
So, after the three single run of ‘Fingers of Steel’, ‘Six-Pack’, and ‘Adderall’, all we have are a few days until a new Shame album is thrust upon us. The band’s last effort, Drunk Tank Pink, found its way onto our list of the Best Albums of 2021. By all accounts, it’s looking like Food for Worms is trending toward making an appearance on the 2023 version of that list. It’s too early to tell, but based on what we’ve heard so far, Food for Worms seems like some top-quality material. It’s been fascinating to see how bands like Dry Cleaning and Yard Act are adjusting to being the face of a new wave, but Shame is actually one of the most interesting bands currently riding that same wave.
Check out the video for ‘Adderall’ down below. Food for Worms is set for a February 24th release.
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