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Tuesday 12 AprilShameUK
Support: PVA
Bracing Post-Punk Band From London
South London’s brash post-punk outfit Shame follow in the footsteps of unflinching musicians and writers such as The Fall, Television Personalities, and Irvine Welsh. On their bracing 2018 debut album, ‘Songs of Praise’,which they recorded when they were barely in their twenties — and 2021’s frenetic ‘Drunk Tank Pink’, they bridged the personal and political with wit and fury.
Vocalist Charlie Steen, guitarists Sean Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green, bassist Josh Finerty, and drummer Charlie Forbes met in school and formed Shame in 2014 while still in their teens. A family connection led the quintet to practice at the Queen’s Head, a gritty Brixton pub that was also home to Fat White Family. Gigs with that band, the Garden, and Slaves led to an appearance at 2016’s Pitchfork Music Festival Paris. Later that year, Shame tapped Dan Foat and Nathan Boddy to record their debut single, ‘The Lick/Gold Hole’, which Fnord Communications released later that year. After signing with Dead Oceans, the group reunited with Foat and Boddy on their next single, March 2017’s ‘Tasteless’. Two more singles, ‘Concrete’ and ‘Visa Vulture’, a commentary on Prime Minister Theresa May’s stance on immigration, appeared before the release of Shame’s debut album.
Recorded with Foat and Boddy in ten days, Songs of Praise arrived on Dead Oceans in January 2018. The record’s snarling update of post-punk met with critical acclaim and peaked at number 32 on the U.K. Albums Chart. When the band finished touring in support of Songs of Praise, they began work on their next album, with Coyle-Smith taking inspiration from Talking Heads, ESG, and Nigerian highlife music and Steen using the ups and downs of life after their success as fodder for his lyrics. Recorded with producer James Ford, Drunk Tank Pink — named after the color used to calm aggressively inebriated prisoners arrived in January 2021 and offered a louder and more ambitious version of Shame’s music.
Support: PVA
Since forming in the din of a house party two years ago, PVA are the genre-hopping passion project of London musicians Ella Harris, Josh Baxter, and Louis Satchell. The three-piece traverse fistfuls of genres throughout rapturous live sets, incorporating techno landscapes, Balearic euphoria, and industrial miasma within the same songs. The band’s unique energy combines with blocky synths, deadpan vocals, and motorik drum loops to earmark the group as one of the capital’s foremost new bands. The band signed to Speedy Wunderground to do one of their prestigious sessions, (following the path of Black Midi, Squid, and Black Country, New Road amongst others) selling out 250 records before any could ship and have been widely praised and played heavily on BBC Radio 6 and KEXP, with Divine Intervention being described as ‘Patti Smith fronting Factory Floor’, (Pierre Hall) with ’that sweet LCD Soundsystem energy … God, it’s good’ (The Guardian). The track has racked up nearly 70,000 plays within the space of a month.
With a hefty list of festivals and support slots including Franc Moody, HMLTD, The Orielles and Squid, the band have quickly become the most exciting band of 2020. After playing showcases at Austin’s SXSW, they will be heading to Japan to play shows in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka.