It’s unlikely that the executives at Adderall manufacturer Teva Pharmaceuticals keep tabs on the UK’s vibrant post-punk scene, but they’ll probably be hearing about Shame soon enough. The South London band’s third and finest album, Food for Worms, reaches an emotional apex on a song called “Adderall,” a wrenching tune about watching a friend “pop and slip away,” consumed by their addiction to prescription drugs. In the bridge, lead singer Charlie Steen’s gruff bark blooms into a hoarse plea fraught with helplessness: “I know it’s not a choice/You open up the doors/Then you hear another voice.” It’s the closest thing to a power ballad these young Brits have made, fueled by a reserve of empathy and catharsis that only fleetingly bubbled to the surface on their previous albums.
Five years ago, Steen and his bandmates were barely out of their teens when the youthful rage of their debut, Songs of Praise, made them darlings of the UK music press. With 2021’s Drunk Tank Pink, they embraced a knottier post-punk sound: spiky rhythms, sprechgesang, free-associative road poems, the works. “We were trying to be too clever,” drummer Charlie Forbes recently reflected. The band was classified with a restless new wave of (mostly) British and Irish post-punk weirdos who talk more than they sing and have cryptic names that sound like military codes—Black Country, New Road; Dry Cleaning; Fontaines D.C.; Squid—but Shame never quite felt a part of that crowd. Their songs had choruses. They chafed at the “post-punk” label; Steen was more influenced by Bob Dylan than Public Image Ltd.
Now, on Food for Worms, their heart-on-sleeve earnestness further distinguishes this band from the detached non-sequiturs of Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw or the agitated hysteria of Squid’s Ollie Judge. Recorded live in the studio to better capture their festival-stage energy, the album has a rousing, communal spirit that melts shards of icy post-punk into warmer forms, like the wah-wah psych-rock euphoria of “Six-Pack,” or the roiling frustration of “Yankees,” a sour ballad in which Steen exorcises a deeply toxic relationship (“When you’re down, you bring me down/And that is love, so you say”). “Fingers of Steel,” with its ramshackle piano and tales of twentysomething malaise, is like the Hold Steady for disaffected Brits who like wonky tunings.
The songwriting is the group’s sharpest to date. They can still whip up the staccato panic-attack special (see: “Alibis”), but that’s no longer the main attraction, nor the most compelling material. “Adderall” is the centerpiece of Shame’s newfound spirit of generosity: It doesn’t snuff out the band’s prior intensity, just nudges it in a new direction.
As it happens, “Adderall” is also emblematic of the record’s loose theme: friendship and its discontents. Steen was chatting with a pal after a show when it occurred to him that popular music mostly centers around love, heartbreak, or the self. “There isn’t much about your mates,” he realized. Food for Worms is a corrective, mired in the mid-twenties realization that you can’t always get through to a friend who needs help. “Fingers of Steel” wrings anthemic pain out of this predicament, toggling between empathy and aggravation over a friend’s depression, while “Different Person” evokes the anxiety of watching someone close to you morph beyond recognition. “You say you’re different, but you’re still the same!” Steen yelps, as though desperately trying to convince himself.
Speaking of different, Steen’s vocals have evolved. He barked and talk-sang his way through Drunk Tank Pink, an approach that worked, but which he admitted was borne out of an insecurity with his lack of training. This time, Steen tries something revolutionary: He sings. He hired a vocal coach, who encouraged him to channel vulnerability instead of detachment. So we get surprising standouts like “Orchid,” a stirring, waltz-time ballad in which Steen croons in a dry tenor that’s half Matt Berninger and half Bernard Sumner. It’s another grief-flecked tune that summons the weight of a boyhood friendship grown distant: “I know you hide behind yourself,” Steen repeats. “But I want you back to me.” Food for Worms acutely captures the feeling of taking stock of interpersonal detritus from your formative years and realizing that the relationships you expected to last forever often fade.
If the disaffected talk-singing of the band’s contemporaries evokes isolation—an abstract poet muttering to herself about hot dogs, say—Shame’s new songs are defined by an intrinsic sense of togetherness. Songs like “Fingers of Steel” and “Adderall” are heightened by swelling, call-and-response vocal parts. The LP staggers to a close with the Pogues-like “All the People,” a six-minute singalong of brotherly love. It’s fitting that an album so steeped in the joys and agonies of friendship captures its sounds, too. Food for Worms finishes with a cheerful snippet of studio chatter. Isn’t that the youthful promise of joining a band in the first place—to be surrounded by your best mates day and night; to hope your shared love and creativity never fade?
