About Blondshell:
The second album from Sabrina Teitelbaum, aka Blondshell, borrows its title from a 1986 poem by the cherished American writer Mary Oliver, titled “Dogfish.” In the poem, Oliver grapples with the idea of telling one’s own story: how much to share, how much to keep for oneself — all questions Teitelbaum asked herself while writing If You Asked For A Picture. “There’s a part of the poem that says: I don’t need to tell you everything I’ve been through. It’s just another story of somebody trying to survive,” Teitelbaum says. “Something I love about songs is that you’re showing a snapshot of a person or a relationship, and showing a glimpse into a story can be just as important as trying to capture the entire thing. Sometimes it’s even truer to the entire picture than if you tried to write everything down.”
Blondshell’s self-titled 2023 debut unleashed a swiss-army-knife writing style that gets under your skin: songs that are as visceral and anthemic as pop music with all the specificity, self-examination, and nonchalant humor of the best indie rock — songs you want to let crash over you, even as their strength is too concrete to be washed away. It’s a formula that turned Blondshell into one of the most lauded new artists in recent memory. If You Asked For A Picture expands these artistic horizons further, resulting in a collection of songs from an artist now at the peak of her powers that brim with an urgency, ambition, and devastating potency only hinted at until now.
If You Asked For A Picture is alive with a more vital nuance both sonically and thematically, gesturing towards a deeper autobiographical story that taps into something painfully universal without being too overt. Teitelbaum explains, “The first record feels really black-and-white to me. This record has more questions.” The lucid songs of If You Asked For A Picture dig into familial relationships — parents who pass on their trauma (as in “23’s A Baby”), the endless two-way critique between mothers and daughters (the alt-rock daydream “What’s Fair”), and the loyalty of a sister who won’t forget how a man wronged you (the crushingly catchy accidental-love story “T&A”). Teitelbaum acknowledges her inherent imperfections while trying to extend compassion for the flaws in others. “The last record was a lot of, ‘You’re the villain in this situation, you’ve wronged me, and I’m really pissed’” she says. “On this record it was more like: ‘How did I get here? Maybe I’m the villain too.’ There was something freeing in that.” A major theme of If You Asked For A Picture is control — and the possibility of loosening her grip on it — including two songs (“Thumbtack,” “Toy”) that touch on Teitelbaum’s lifelong struggle with OCD.
In the studio, Teitelbaum found herself confident and at home like never before, trusting her instincts as she developed an almost telekinetic shorthand with producer Yves Rothman. The result is a record of astounding sonic range – including sky-scraping ballads and colossal hooks that soar over waves of distortion, mixing layered textures and harmonic flourishes, or making unexpected hairpin turns between them. Primary among her production touchstones were unexpected curveballs like Queens of the Stone Age’s Rated R and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication. Teitelbaum reveled in appropriating those hyper-masculine aesthetics for her uncompromising examinations of young womanhood, playing with performances of gender in rock. “It’s empowering for me to use sonic references that feel reserved for men,” she explains.
If You Asked for a Picture’s acoustic opener “Thumbtack” is a bittersweet gut-punch of self-reckoning amid an uneasy relationship. “So much of the last record was about finding myself in relationships I didn’t want to be in and not knowing why,” Teitelbaum says. “‘Thumbtack’ is one of those songs, but this record is more about finding out why and trying to be in different types of relationships.” Who among us
can’t relate to longing for someone even as they prove to be “a thumbtack in my side,” as Teitelbaum sings on the song’s slyly gigantic hook? “You’re not even a good friend,” she sings, a classic Blondshell mic-drop.
Bone-deep revelations like these have become a Blondshell hallmark — startling clarity, comforting wit — and If You Asked For A Picture is full of them. “I don’t want to be your mom, but you’re not strong enough,” she sings before the tidal chorus of “Arms.” On the clear-eyed “What’s Fair,” she examines a complex maternal relationship (“I grew up fast without you”), trying to empathize even as she refuses to sweep the truth under the rug. “You always had a reason to comment on my body,” she sings, like a century of mother-daughter exchanges compressed to 10 words. Teitelbaum addresses body image throughout the record, whether observing her own changing shape or admitting “part of me still sits at home in a panic over fifteen pounds” on “Event of a Fire,” a road narrative that builds to a blaze of brutal candor, capturing a kind of cinematic back-seat interiority.
In the time since Blondshell, the image of Teitelbaum’s life has changed considerably. As the accolades accrued — late-night TV performances, countless year-end accolades, landing on Obama’s Best Songs of 2023 list, covering Talking Heads for A24’s Stop Making Sense tribute — Teitelbaum spent two years on the road. She played 150+ shows in support of her debut, including major festivals and a tour with Liz Phair on top of her own sold-out headline dates. This rootlessness naturally impacted Teitelbaum’s relationships with others and with herself. “When you travel a lot, you see different possibilities for who you can be,” Teitelbaum says. “So there were a lot more questions coming up. What do I want my life to look like? Maybe it’s just the nature of being two years older, but I’m more comfortable with nuance now, and I’m more comfortable with gray areas.” There’s an open-endedness to where If You Asked For A Picture lands: it’s a no-skips, triumphant sophomore record that captures the unresolved process of figuring out who you are, too wise to suggest that it has a definitive answer.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
About shame:
Cutthroat is a joyride.
It’s for the inexperienced driver. The one who wants to go fast for no reason other than it’s fun.
It’s driven by hunger. Hunger for something better. For something you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
It’s primal. It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s the person who turns up to the party uninvited.
’Cause when you’ve been pushed down, there’s nowhere to go but up. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” – shame
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says vocalist Charlie Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
An unapologetic new album with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm; it’s souped up and supercharged. It’s exactly where you want shame to be.
Still in their twenties, the five childhood friends – Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – have grown shame exponentially, with ambitious sonic ideas and the technical chops to execute them.
Having proved themselves several times over with legendary live shows and three critically-acclaimed albums under their belts, shame went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero.
“This is about who we are,” says Steen. “Our live shows aren’t performance art – they’re direct, confrontational and raw. That’s always been the root of us. We live in crazy times. But it’s not about ‘Poor me.’ It’s about ‘Fuck you’.”
Crucial to this incendiary new outlook was producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen). From their initial meeting, Congleton’s no-bullshit approach became a guiding force to streamline the band’s ideas.
Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. With Trump in the Whitehouse and shame holed up in Salvation Studios in Brighton, they cast a merciless eye on themes of conflict and corruption; hunger and desire; lust, envy and the omnipresent shadow of cowardice.
Musically, too, the record plays with visceral new ideas. Making electronic music on tour for fun, Coyle-Smith had previously seen the loops he was crafting as a separate entity to the things he wrote for shame. Then, he realised, maybe they didn’t have to be. “This time, anything could go if it sounded good and you got it right,” he says.
Cutthroat’s first single and title track takes this idea and runs with it into, quite possibly, the best song shame have ever laid to tape. It’s a ball of barely-contained attitude packed into three minutes of indie dancefloor hedonism. It also masterfully introduces the lyrical outlook of the record: one where cocksure arrogance and deep insecurity are two sides of the same coin.
“I was reading a lot of Oscar Wilde plays where everything was about paradox,” Steen explains. “In ‘Cutthroat’, it’s that whole idea from Lady Windermere’s Fan, ‘Life’s far too important to be taken seriously’.”
‘Spartak’ rolls in on an Americana-flecked country lilt (“I was basically trying to write a Wilco song,” Coyle-Smith chuckles). This song holds one of the main themes of the record, criticising cliques and pack-mentality.
It sets its crosshairs on the social climbers; the people at the party always looking over your shoulder trying to find someone more important.
“I guess this disdain towards cliques comes from how shit I was made to feel by the cool kids growing up.” Says Steen, “ I was a chubby teenager who liked the wrong type of music and wore the wrong type of clothes.”
“It’s just another time I’d like to say fuck you to those people, and to anyone who makes someone feel shitty for not fitting in.” Steen says with a smile on his face.
Album highlight ‘Quiet Life’, the first spark in the Cutthroat writing process, is delivered via a snarling Rockabilly riff, influenced by the tone and attitude of such bands as The Gun Club and The Cramps.
“‘Quiet Life’ is about someone in a shitty relationship. It’s about the judgment they receive and the struggle that they have to go through, trying to understand the conflict they face, of wanting a better life… but being stuck.”
‘Lampião’ goes where shame have never gone before, as Steen sings in Portuguese about the polarising Brazilian bandit – a hero to some, a murderer to others.
“My girlfriend is Brazilian and I was in São Paulo with her parents,” Steen says. “Her mum told me about this famous bandit, Lampião, and his wife, Maria Bonita. They’re like Bonnie and Clyde over there, and just as famous.
“It seemed crazy to me how nobody in London seemed to know who they were, so I wanted to write this sort of folk-song about them, condensing their story. The song that I’m singing in the chorus was actually written by one of the bandits in Lampião’s crew, Volta Seca.”
‘After Party’ underpins Steen’s spitting delivery with unsettling, tremulous synths that then break into a wryly chirpy chorus before closer, ‘Axis of Evil’, sends shame into a whole new thrilling dimension. Channelling the prowling, lusty electronics of Depeche Mode, it’s like nothing the band have done before.
This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. As much as shame want to burst the bubbles of bluster and ego, encouraging us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, ‘He who casts the first stone…’, they also understand that, at its heart, life is often ridiculous.
“You never know when you’re gonna go, so make it count while you’re still here,” Steen shrugs. “Every good Catholic kid like myself might have fallen asleep every night with a crucified Jesus on their wall. Maybe that has something to do with it as well…”
The result is an album that revels in the idiosyncrasies of life, raising an eyebrow and asking the ugly questions that so often get tactfully brushed over.
“I’m not here to answer the questions, I’m a 27-year-old idiot…” Steen caveats with a self-effacing chuckle. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
