There are moments on Drunk Tank Pink where you almost have to reach for the
sleeve to check this is the same band who made 2018’s Songs Of Praise. Such
is the jump Shame have made from the riotous post-punk of their debut to the
sprawling adventurism and twitching anxieties laid out here. The South
Londoner’s blood and guts spirit, that wink and grin of devious charm, is
still present, it’s just that it’s grown into something bigger, something
deeper, more ambitious and unflinchingly honest.
The genius of ‘Drunk Tank Pink’ is how these lyrical themes dovetail with
the music. Opener “Alphabet” dissects the premise of performance over a
siren call of nervous, jerking guitars, its chorus thrown out like a beer bottle
across a mosh pit. “Nigel Hitter”, meanwhile, turns the mundanity of routine
into something spectacular via a disjointed jigsaw of syncopated rhythms and
broken wristed punk funk.
Bassist Josh Finerty had begun to record the band’s divergent ideas at home
in South London which were then fleshed out in a writing trip in the Scottish
highlands with electronic artist Makeness, before sessions in La Frette studios
in France with Arctic Monkeys producer James Ford. The result is an enormous
expansion of Shame’s sonic arsenal.
From the womb to the clouds (sort of), Shame are currently very much in
the pink.
