Shame – ‘Food for Worms’ album review: A frantic splurge of eclectic existentialism
Since Shame first arrived with their debut album Songs of Praise in 2018, their proudly weird ways have been somewhat of a totem pole that others have attempted to mount. Seemingly, when the times get weird, the weird turn weirder—enter their third effort: Food for Worms. This eclectic splurge of roaring existentialism might just be their wildest emotional explosion yet.
It begins with a bang, or rather a banger. Throwing things back to indie exultation, the band’s burst out of the traps is an instantly invigorating one that says you’ve backed a winner. The heavily caffeinated reverie of ‘Fingers of Steel’ is a wallop that whisks you back to the divebars of your youth. In fact, the whirling vinyl near enough whisks up its own stinking half-knackered smoke machine and spills your cuppa onto the rug.
But this adrenalised touchstone to days of youth is cut with a pertinent point—a point that is immediately easier to decipher from the video than Charlie Steen’s roaring vocal line. In a Brass Eye-like takedown of the times, the James Humby-directed video for the opener sees the band pulling 19-hour shifts to create fake accounts and engage in a bit of manufactured Shame promo. It’s a fun watch but filled with a prescient message, much like the music itself.
As the energetic frontman explained: “Self-obsession, social media flagellation and death can all be seen in this Oscar-nominated performance. No one’s ever done a video like this before and when you watch it, you’ll see why. Think Casablanca, but in colour, and better.” He’s just being daft again, but he covered the pertinent points in the first few words anyhow. That’s the way that Shame roll on this record—a volley of wit is followed by a wild unravelling of pent-up emotion.
They waste no time in reaching this premise. The joyous melodic refrain of ‘Fingers of Steel’ is quickly battered to the canvas by the introduction of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar pedal rig on ‘Six Pack’. A pounding maelstrom that barely catches its own breath, this blindsiding approaches the brink of flattening you, but paradoxically proves so enthralling that it guides you away from utter bewilderment through sheer will alone.
The manic make-up of the dichotomous opening duo signposts the rest of the album’s wavering, weird ways. The boys borrow tones from a range of genres as wide as the interests of the One Show. But the unified thrill of the album is in just how unabated it perpetually proves. Why dabble in the blues when you can fly into the challenge and come out with the ball a few decades further up the pitch?
There is a distinctly appealing sense that Shame are not just a clobbered-together band from the scene but a bunch of pals in the traditional sense reaching exultation away from the modern mire in the practice room, live show, studio or wherever they perform. Food for Worms welcomes you into that world. Its young fellows making sense of the world around them in a that whisks the listener into the sweaty room where it was crafted.
In fact, they recently had to reschedule an interview with yours truly because they’re knuckling down into practice—and that’s swell, because as the record shows – and even detractors who find it conceited could concede this – they are a band who seem to be doing it for the love of it—and it’s a love that gives them confidence to attack things unflinchingly. That is a vital point that pushes the unnecessarily dissonant ‘Different Person’ or the occasional ‘bloody settle down man’ moment over the line and allows you to celebrate the chaos rather than question it.
Nevertheless, when you do peak beyond the gaudy curtain of the song’s vibrant sonic surface, you find a joyously youthful look at mid-20s ‘where are we now / where am I now’ existentialism, like an adolescent Albert Camus on speed with his buddies from his past playing along.
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