shame have released ‘Quiet Life,’ the second single/video from their new album Cutthroat, out September 5th via Dead Oceans.
On the heels of title track, ‘Cutthroat,’ praised by Brooklyn Vegan as “a fun, in-your-face riff rock banger,” ‘Quiet Life,’ is a snarling rockabilly track in the vein of The Gun Club and The Cramps. Of the track, vocalist Charlie Steen says: “‘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.” In the song’s opening lines, Steen sings, “Spent too much time on my knees. / Round here nothing’s good for me, / But I still can’t make the choice to leave.” The video, directed by Pedro Takahashi and produced by FRIEND, features the band and friends venting their pent-up frustrations in a run-down office building.
shame – Quiet Life (Official Video)
Cutthroat is shame at their blistering best; an unapologetic new album made with Grammy winning producer John Congleton at the helm. “It’s about the cowards, the cunts, the hypocrites,” says Steen. “Let’s face it, there’s a lot of them around right now.”
Still in their twenties and having proved themselves several times over since their 2018 debut, Songs of Praise, the five childhood friends – singer Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty and drummer Charlie Forbes – went into Cutthroat ready to create a new Ground Zero. Stamped throughout with shame’s trademark sense of humour, the album takes on the big issues of today and gleefully toys with them. 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. This cheeky self-awareness, too, is important. 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. But the one answer that Cutthroat gives with a resounding flourish is that, right now, shame have never sounded better.
“‘Cutthroat’ is an in-your-face introduction to the what’s to come. It’s steeped in attitude, with blown out yell-sing vocals from Steen.” — Paste
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Cutthroat
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