Pop review: Shame at the 100 Club, W1

★★★★☆
Every now and then a guitar band come along who may sound quite a lot like so many guitar bands before them, but have such energy and conviction that they breathe new life into the old formula. Shame certainly fit this category. Five late teens and twentysomethings who grew out of south London’s fertile indie scene, they last week released a debut, Songs of Praise, that recalled the stringent urgency of the Fall: brutal and thuggish, but with an artistic outsider’s perspective. And it made perfect sense that their album launch show should be held at the 100 Club, the Oxford Street basement dive that had a central role in the history of punk rock.

Shame may have been more laddish than insurrectionary, marching on to the little stage before an excited millennial crowd holding their arms aloft, but the singer Charlie Steen did have something of the sunlight-starved demeanour of Sid Vicious and enough rebellious fervour to make you think that, yes, the revolution would happen right here and now, at least until the set came to an end. By the first song Steen had launched himself into the crowd, by the second his shirt was off and by the third, Concrete, Shame were sounding quite a lot like the Clash. And it appealed because, unlike so many bands who are thinking more about their bank balances than their convictions, they weren’t afraid to get up people’s noses.