Food For Worms - Shame: Review
are an English post-punk act who got their debut out in 2018 before the genre fully exploded in the years since with a number of bands being drowned in critical acclaim. Their sophomore album Drunk Tank Pink in 2021 felt the benefit of that wave as they were covered alongside bands like Black Country, New Road, Squid, Black Midi, and Dry Cleaning. Food For Worms was teased with a trio of singles released starting last year that projected an advancing of the band's sonic influences.
Review by Lav:
While I wasn't crazy about the debut shame album and it was kind of a surprise to me how much it took off, I think they took a BIG step forward with their sophomore album Drunk Tank Pink. I was pretty positive in my coverage but I think I like the album even more than I was able to say at the time, which had me particularly excited for this record. While I'm not quite as crazy about Food For Worms, it sees that band expanding the scope of their sound in a way that has the potential to lead to something great going forward.
This album gets off to a GREAT start across the first four tracks. The opening pair of songs also served as singles starting with Fingers Of Steel which I loved last year and still adore. The glittery little guitar leads contrasting the shouted vocals on the hook are perfectly placed and I find every single refrain on the song pretty memorable. Six-Pack is a song that somehow missed me entirely when it first came out which is a shame because it's plenty good enough to have made my best singles list. The blurry psychedelic guitar tones and energetic chant-along verses are awesome.
Next up is Yankees and Alibis both of which I like quite a bit as well. The former is a bit more minimal than the singles starting off with this really isolated desert guitar riff but it builds into a very triumphant high. It has a jock jammy shout-along hook that will feel pretty familiar to shame fans, but it's high reaching and catchy enough that I don't mind. Alibis is one of the loudest songs on the record and I love its combination of crushing distorted riffs and catchy refrains.
While the second half of the album is a lot more inconsistent, there is one more great track in Different Person. The track is a great lyrical highlight that also manages to frequently make drastic shifts to the energy level like so many great shame songs do. The classic snarling punk refrains on the back end of the track are completely irresistible.
Some of my issues just deal with songs sounding like less inspired versions of better tracks on the first hald. Adderall always felt like a weird choice for a single with long periods of time delivering pretty low energy levels. My biggest problem with the album is that the climax feels so tepid in comparison to some of the best high points on other tracks on the record. Burning By Design is similar, nowhere near a bad song, just outclassed by the album's highlights.
Orchid is an interesting track that reminds me so much of Black Country, New Road that it's distracting. From the poetically wandering vocal style to the rapid jumps to dense loud instrumentation from quiet and more sparse moments it feels like it almost supersedes inspiration and goes straight to mimicry. This song also isn't bad at all and I like the chaotic finale quite a bit, but it has some unmistakable stylistic parallels to the debut BC,NR album in particular.
My biggest complaint about this album is something I would have never expected because it was such a strength on their previous effort, the vocals. Part of me wants to brush that aside because I admire the band taking their sound in new sonic and compositional directions, but I'll also be the first one to admit that some of the vocals being deployed were clearly not ready for that shift. A good example is The Fall Of Paul which actually has some of my favorite lyrics on the album and I love the snarky verses as much as ever. Unfortunately, I find it pretty hard to take the chorus seriously with how silly and out-of-place the vocal performance sounds.
An even better example of this is the closing track All The People which has a shockingly positive message but one that's almost a non-starter because the way it's performed sounds borderline sarcastic. While I appreciate that it's a cathartic finale to the record and there are things I like about it, I also think it's the one song here that really can't overcome the vocal deficiencies.
I was surprised by this record for reasons both good and not-so-good but ultimately I think it's a deserving follow-up. Even though I'm not coming away from this as impressed as I was with Drunk Tank Pink, one of the things I thought was missing from that album was variety and the band delivers that in spades here. It's a tradeoff that I'm comfortable making given that I liked a lot more of this record than I didn't and that they've shown an ability to adapt to and improve upon their sound in the past and if the next record is as much a jump in quality from Food For Worms as their second album was from their first, it could be an instant classic. 7/10
