• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
  • Magazine
  • Our Story
  • Buzz Learning
  • Buzz TV
  • Contact Buzz
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
Buzz Magazine

Buzz Magazine

What's On in Wales - Your Ultimate Guide

  • Culture
    • Art
    • Books
    • Comedy
    • Dance
    • Film
    • Music
    • Sport
    • Theatre
    • TV
  • Life
    • Reviews
    • Interviews
    • Travel
    • Food & Drink
    • Community
    • Environment
  • Regions
    • South Wales
    • Mid Wales
    • West Wales
    • North Wales
  • What’s On
  • Culture
    • Art
    • Books
    • Comedy
    • Dance
    • Film
    • Music
    • Sport
    • Theatre
    • TV
  • Life
    • Reviews
    • Interviews
    • Travel
    • Food & Drink
    • Community
    • Environment
  • Regions
    • South Wales
    • Mid Wales
    • West Wales
    • North Wales
  • What’s On

  • Magazine
  • Our Story
  • Buzz Learning
  • Buzz TV

  • Contact Buzz
  • Write for Buzz
  • Advertising
  • Jobs
  • FAQs
  • Privacy Policy

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
You are here: Home / Culture / Music / Live / SHAME bust out a frenetic – but lacking – Cardiff headliner gig

SHAME bust out a frenetic – but lacking – Cardiff headliner gig

November 11, 2021 Category: Live, Reviews Region: South Wales
Shame at Tramshed, Cardiff - credit Ben Woolhead
Shame - credit Ben Woolhead

No prizes for guessing that the core members of Shame support act, The Umlauts, met at an arts college in south London. A multinational enterprise, the patchwork troupe take the post-punk path less travelled (albeit somewhat following in the footsteps of the Slits and more recently Black Country, New Road) and dispense with guitar and bass, relying prominently on rhythm. Shouty German vocals, a front-of-stage violin and eccentric synths combine to create a cacophonous electro-klezmer rave-up. It’s the musical equivalent of returning home drunk and rustling up a snack from whatever’s lying around in the fridge – ambitious but amateurish fusion food that’s perfectly palatable to the hungry inebriate but perhaps less so to anyone who’s still stone-cold sober on a Tuesday night in Cardiff.

RELATED: ‘Another week, another successful Welsh band filling one of Cardiff’s arenas – this time it’s the turn of Bridgend’s Bullet For My Valentine.’

Still, that dog’s dinner soon comes to seem significantly more appetising. Late replacements for buzz band Wet Leg, The Goa Express are the polar opposite of what went before: bland, processed, predictable, Kooks-y rather than kooky. The cheeky scamps’ alleged garagey psych rock is so lite as to be as flavourless as tapwater. There’s no accounting for the dulled tastebuds of the great British public, though, so I wouldn’t be remotely surprised to see them go stratospheric.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by shame (@shame)

shame via Instagram

Now with two albums under their belt (2017’s Songs Of Praise and last year’s Drunk Tank Pink), headliners Shame hit the Tramshed stage like a hurricane, looking every inch a band with a live reputation to uphold and a lust to make up for lost time. Vocalist Charlie Steen prowls about like a pumped-up squaddie in a pair of shades borrowed from someone in the front row, and waves the mic stand around as though he’s knighting members of the audience. Meanwhile, in bassist Josh Finerty, shuttle-running excitedly from side to side, they have their very own Angus Young.

But while contemporaries Fontaines DC – also recent Cardiff visitors – possess a degree of charm and subtlety, it transpires that Shame is by and large a blunt instrument fronted by a shirtless personification of belligerent masculinity. Opener Alphabet and excellent early single The Lick stand out, but too much of the set is an indistinguishable blur of boot boy bellow and songs steeped in cooking lager and dosed up on cheap speed. Perversely, despite the frenetic pace, the set ends up dragging.

There’s no denying Shame put absolutely everything they’ve got into their Cardiff performance – but, personally speaking, I’m still left cold.

Tramshed, Cardiff, Tue 9 Nov

words and photos BEN WOOLHEAD

KEEP READING: ‘Hailed as “titans” of the heavy underground, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Swansea date this weekend should bring both weight and wit.’

See What’s On at Tramshed

Learn more
  • Tweet

About Ben Woolhead

Writer, editor, pedant. Regular Buzz contributor on music, books, film, photography, food and more. Occasional writer for the BBC, Wales Arts Review and a host of websites and fanzines.
More
Twitter

Tag: ben woolhead, buzz live review, buzz music review, cardiff live review, cardiff music review, shame, south wales live review, south wales music review, the goa express, the umlauts, tramshed

You may also like:

Guitarists WILL VARLEY & JACK VALERO create richly poignant live atmosphere

“I would die if my album didn’t come out in 12 months” – MAHALIA talks new EP & future plans before Cardiff debut

London rockers PUPPY make every riff count at no-frills Clwb gig

Illusory Contours

Cultvr Lab’s latest audiovisual experience ILLUSORY CONTOURS channels THE MATRIX

Let dance piece SPIRIT OF NIMBA recharge & uplift you

Traumatic humour & necessary urgency: REVOLT. SHE SAID. REVOLT AGAIN. is a radical act of public mourning


Sidebar

Looking for something to do?

The Ultimate Guide to What’s on in Wales!

See What’s On
BTP - Campaign

Buzz archives

Buzz Magazine

12 Gaspard Place
Barry
Vale Of Glamorgan
CF62 6SJ

[email protected]

Contact Us
  • Jobs
  • Advertising
  • Editorial
  • Submit an Event
  • Write for Buzz
About Us
  • Our Story
  • Magazine
  • Buzz Learning
  • Media Services
  • FAQs
  • Privacy Policy
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube


Copyright © 2022   |   All Rights Reserved   |   Buzz Magazine   


We are using cookie tracking to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we track and personalise your preferences in settings.

Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.