Live Report: Shame, Tivoli Theatre

Shame are the angriest young band in Britain. Having bubbled up from the same south London scene that produced King Krule and Goat Girl, the quintet have transcended their origins with songs that roar, kick and swing two bloodied fists at the status quo. 

So it proved as they played their biggest Irish show yet, with pyrotechnic support from Dublin punk-pop fellow travellers Murder Capital and Fontaines. DC. With the room already bouncing, the headliners roared into ‘Dust On Trial’, the first track from shin-kicking debut Songs of Praise (bafflingly overlooked for a Mercury nomination).  

The group’s not so secret weapon was frontman Charlie Steen who arrived dressed like a millennial Suggs from Madness. He had the body language of a matey bouncer and wore over-sized sunglasses, quickly chucked to one side the better to sweatily bond with his public. 

Blending angst and wit, the performance set out the Shame manifesto with devastating effect. Guitars roared and lurched as Steen half-chanted, half-howled lyrics somewhere between socio-political treatise and shriek into the abyss. 

Already super-charged the intensity was heightened further with the one-two punch of ‘Concrete’ and ‘One Rizla’. Next Steen and co blazed through the molten drone of ‘The Lick’,  Shame’s incandescent take down of Brexit Britain and its slide towards global basket-case. 

“This is how it ends,” Steen exclaimed dolorously as the track wound down. In fact, Shame were just getting started. ‘Exhaler and ‘Gold Hole’ were louder, more cathartic yet and by the encore of ‘Donk’ the frontman was surfing the crowd with his shirt off , as though mere fabric and stitching could not contain his fury.