SHAME

shame were tourists in their own adolescence – and nothing was quite like the postcard. The freefall of their early twenties, in all its delight and disaster, was tangled up in being hailed one of post-punk’s greatest hopes. In 2018, they took their incendiary debut album Songs of Praise for a cross-continental joyride for almost 350 relentless nights. They tried to bite off more than they could chew, just to prove their teeth were sharp enough – but eventually, you’ve got to learn to spit it out. Then came the hangover. shame’s frontman, Charlie Steen, suffered a series of panic attacks which led to the tour’s cancellation.

For the first time, since being plucked from the stage of The Windmill in Brixton (London) and catapulted into notoriety, shame were confronted with who they’d become on the other side of it. This era, of being forced to endure reality and the terror that comes with your own company, would form shame’s second album, Drunk Tank Pink (2021), the band’s reinvention. Finally they have arrived at a place of hard-won maturity. Enter: Food for Worms (2023), which Steen declares to be “the Lamborghini of shame records.” An ode to friendship and a celebration of life; the way that, in the end, we need each other. We can’t wait to celebrate together at our festival.