SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: SHAME – CUTTHROAT

SHAME
CUTTHROAT
DEAD OCEANS

From the very first seconds of the album, the listener knows that Cutthroat, the punchy fifth studio release from UK post-punk band shame, won’t be the album you put on at Sunday brunch.

In order to grasp the full climate of Cutthroat, the album demands undivided attention and multiple listens, which is simultaneously a benefit for and a detriment to the album. Sonically, Cutthroat has taken a turn from the band’s typical muddy post-punk sound. Instead, shame has swapped out the dark, introspective feelings of prior albums and created an explosion of angry extroversion, so much extroversion that the album has many moments of tedious frivolousness.

Cutthroat paints a bright and exciting picture, full of sharp lines and effervescent colours, which makes it all the more confusing as to why the album is so vapid. Each individual track lures you in with an edgy and attention-grabbing opener, but by the time the chorus has come around, you find yourself asking “how did we get here?” as the contagious tedium from the track before lingers on.

Cutthroat’s pitfall is simply how repetitive it becomes after the first three songs, songs that aren’t particularly memorable at that. After the first three tracks, the rest of the album feels as though it will blend into one large mediocre song that spends its duration complaining about everything under the sun. It is hard to understand how an album can have 37 minutes of music and convey next to nothing as the album is at times completely devoid of any deep, intrinsic meaning. Listening to the album feels as though the listener is a weary traveller crawling their way through a dry desert, riding on the hope that the next track will be a vast oasis of musical goodness, and not an empty mirage like the song prior.

When the listener has been fooled time and time again by the mirage of meaningful listening, a hero appears at the end of the album. “Packshot” is without a doubt the strongest track on the record and is truly what has saved this album from a harsher review. “Packshot” is not only the best song on the record but is a contender for shame’s strongest song yet. It gives the album the touch of meaningful commentary and eloquence that the rest of the album is attempting to achieve. Other notable songs here are the album closer “Axis of Evil”, which acts as the Robin to “Packshot”s Batman, and the tale of the infamous Brazilian bandit “Lampião.”
shame’s combination of witty lyrics and brilliantly composed instrumentals has been the crux of the band’s decade-long career, and Cutthroat contains all these elements. However, the album seems to be missing an integral ingredient that has left Cutthroat feeling curiously uninspired. Cutthroat’s highlight songs are worthy of addiction-like, repeated listening, however that cannot be said for the rest of the album. If Cutthroat was a three-track EP, it could have been one of the year’s best, unfortunately there are nine other songs on the album that water down any glimmer of excellence into a consistently mediocre piece of work.

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