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.
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.
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
