You’ve got to wonder where Shame find the energy. From the opening bars of “Alphabet”, where Charlie Forbes’s pummelling drums reintroduce a furious urgency, to album closer “Station Wagon”, on which frontman Charlie Steen’s guttural vocal command contends with a storm of percussion, piano and guitars, on their second record the south London post-punk band’s stamina is unrelenting.
Drunk Tank Pink is, in many ways, a typical second rock album in that it reflects on the madness caused by the first. Shame’s 2018 debut, Songs of Praise, written when the shouty quintet were barely out of adolescence, was critically adored, garnering them labels including “Britain’s most exciting new band”. Fans were drawn to their no-nonsense lyrics, provocative politics and, most of all, their energetic live shows, honed over years playing at the Queen’s Head in Brixton, former HQ of ramshackle rock group the Fat White Family. Shame toured hard, drank a lot of booze, and then crashed. Their follow-up, landing almost exactly three years later, is a reflection on what it felt like to return to everyday life – even if it doesn’t sound like they laid at all low during the recording process.
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