Shame have been together over three years and in that time have become the most viscerally thrilling new band in the UK, releasing their highly anticipated debut album at the start of 2018.
South London school friends Charlie Steen (vocals), Sean Coyle-Smith (guitar), Eddie Green (guitar), Charlie Forbes (drums) and Josh Finerty (bass) formed the band in a practice space at the infamous Queen’s Head in Brixton. Given three long months – rather than the usual six weeks – to fill in June 2014 after their AS levels, starting a band seemed the best use of that time for everyone.
The Queen’s Head was a lawless space where The Fat White Family rehearsed. “We kind of just took refuge there,” says Forbes. “The Fat Whites didn’t really know we existed for a while until we started using their stuff as we didn’t have any instruments.”
It was the filthy incubator that shaped the band and opened their eyes to whole new ways of life as the much older freaks, dropouts and misfits of South London who frequented it treated it like a freewheeling community centre. “You could do whatever you wanted there,” recalls Steen. “Nothing was off limits.”
After fielding multiple record label offers, Shame signed with Dead Oceans in early 2017. They recorded debut album Songs Of Praise in Rockfield in Wales in 10 days. At just 10 tracks and a run time of 39 minutes, it’s a compression of everything they are about. “We wanted our first album to be concise and to the point,” says Steen. “No bullshit.”
“We are trying to capture a moment that has yet to cease – something that is ongoing and developing,” says Steen on what Shame’s driving force is. “Something that is honest in a lot of ways. None of these stories are fabricated. They are all, unfortunately, true.”
