Album Review: Songs of Praise, Shame

“My nails ain’t manicured/My voice ain’t the best you’ve heard/And you can choose to hate my words/But do I give a fuck?” So purrs Charlie Steen on ‘One Rizla’, and as introductions go, it’s probably about right for this ferocious post-punk outfit from South London.

Together with guitarists Eddie Green and Sean Coyle-Smith, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes, Steen’s band has become one of the most hotly-tipped UK guitar acts for years. This is thanks to a series of incendiary live performances, some of which spiralled into near-anarchy, involving punch-ups and recriminations.

Recorded in just 10 days in Wales with Local Hero behind the production desk, a duo usually associated with more electronic sounds, Songs Of Praise could have been just another murky shout-a-thon from the next vapid young things to have the NME in a lather. But it’s much more than that. A genuinely thrilling, experience dressed up as a full frontal aural assault, it rewards repeated listens with added nuance and subtlety. Not that there’s much subtle about the serrated guitar, rage-filled vocals and driving beats of opening screamfest ‘Dust On Trial’, or the call-and-response punk of ‘Concrete’, but they’re thrillingly dynamic all the same.

Then there’s the “sweet disorder’ of ‘The Lick’, which starts like a millennial descendant of The Velvet’s ‘The Gift’, before morphing into an alternative cathedral of noise, finishing with Steen howling “Bathe me in blood”. Joy Division and The Fall comparisons are inevitable, given the frenetic drumming, angular guitar lines and the intense claustrophobia of the arrangements, but the songs are always shot through with the band’s distinctive personality.

‘Gold Hole’ is a disturbingly sleazy tale of a married older man picking up a much younger female, but rather than paint it in black, Shame’s world is drawn in shades of grey.

Nobody is entirely innocent: “She feels so dirty, she knows that it’s wrong/ But she feels so good in Louis Vuitton”.

The glorious ‘Friction’ confirms there’s serious substance behind the schlock, with Steen railing against apathy: “In a time of such injustice, how can you not want to be heard?” On the closing, almost seven-minute ‘Angie’ – a Ride-meets-the-Bunnymen slice of gothic romance – the frontman also shows he can sing. Does the world really need another bunch of angry young men bearing guitars? You betcha.

The debate among music critics and rock fans over the past few years has centred on whether rock has become a busted flush. However, Shame have shown there’s plenty of life left in the genre yet.

Indeed, listening to Songs Of Praise can take years off even the most jaded of music hacks.

Out now.

Rating: 9/10