With a title phrase that will apply to all living beings eventually, this third LP by the south London post-punk band tempers the punk anger with more light and shade, genre experimentation, and philosophical lyrics. There’s still plenty of bite, such as on opener Fingers of Steel, still punchy and restless (“you’re wasting away …”) but opens with lilting piano before the angular guitars take over. Six-Pack plays around with a funk-prog fuzz guitar base, and there’s a gradual boiling up on Yankees and Alibis for singer Charlie Steen’s rage, but Adderall, in reference the pharmaceutical drug used to treat ADHD and narcolepsy, there’s quiet, slow burn here in a song about watching a friend “pop and slip away”. Orchid is perhaps the band’s most beautiful song to date, and even the best here, an acoustic guitar number that flirts with folk or at least the quieter side of the Smiths, though with a stormy middle eight. Overall, while there’s a sense that Shame are reaching for new ground and aren’t entirely settled, as we reach last track All The People, they still have an intelligent, simmering strength and an increasing maturity. Out on Dead Oceans.
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