Shame: ‘I think each album is where you are at a particular moment then trying to capture that’

It also landed them in the top ten for the first time.

“Just by nature I think we’d all grown up a bit,” says singer Charlie Steen. “Everyone had been playing their instruments for longer and they’d become more capable, maybe in some areas more assured about themselves and in other areas more insecure about themselves.

“I think each album is where you are at a particular moment then trying to capture that, and I think that’s what we did. I don’t think it will necessarily be what the next record sounds like or maybe the one after that, but I think for that moment you have to be truthful about where you are.”

Steen has also reflected that many of the songs are about him learning to enjoy his own company after two years spent touring the world. Although written before the pandemic, it seems an apposite theme for troubled times. “After being surrounded by people for all that time then you just stop and everything is like from the cliffs to the sea kind of thing, it all drops down. When you’re 22 learning to cope on your own regardless, you have to do it, it’s a lesson in life.”

The album’s title derived from a calming shade of paint used in prison cells. Steen used it himself when decorating his own room in a converted nursing home in Peckham. “I made my bedroom with the help of Henry, my flatmate, and Charlie (Forbes) the drummer’s dad who is also on the cover of the record, and a person called Blue who passed away last year. We happened to paint it pink, I’ve no idea why,” he says. “A lot of the record’s themes are about the subconscious and identity and confrontation of different emotions, and my mum was reading this book of colours and came across Camilla pink, it’s used in drunk tanks across the west or south of America and it just kind of fitted, I liked the way it sounded and it had a good story behind it.”

For the first time on record, Steen also addressed romantic heartbreak. He says: “I don’t think you’re ever going to do it justice, that’s the drive to continue going. Whether people criticise it or whatever, at least you’ve given it a go.

“You just have to be honest with yourself. That’s what I was going through at the time and that’s what was on my mind, naturally I was going to write about it. I was definitely insecure about taking the step, but I think it was a necessary one to do.”

The musically ambitious Snow Day is “the peak of the themes on the record”, Steen believes. “It was one that was very much pieced together. Even musically I think it encapsulates how a lot of the record was written. The last one (Songs of Praise) we did a lot of demo-ing. On this one were able to piece together different parts and look at it in a different way. The first one we pretty much played live. Now we have the choice of doing both and knowing the pros and cons. Again it seemed like something necessary to do.

“I think with Covid, it was a way that a lot of people were writing, on their own, that’s the only way you could do it. You can hear in that song there are lots of different sections to it. I think that’s a good one.”

This month Shame are back on the road after a break from touring that Steen admits was “welcome in some ways”. “You go through stages and then you feel sort of nervous about going back on tour, whether you can do it again.

“But we did a socially distanced tour of only independent venues back in April for a month and just went to those areas we hadn’t been to before and that was really good. I guess you forget about the other side of the coin which is so fundamental for clarity.

“But also just being together again in a band. You forget how important that is.”

Steen and his bandmates also used lockdown to write new songs – one of which, This Side of the Sun, is out now as a single. “We’ve been writing together whenever we can,” he says. “We’ve been practising and putting a good group of songs together for the November tour. Hopefully we’ll be able to go and do something with them soon.

“We’re just at the stage where we’ve got a lot of ideas, it’s now just turning them into songs. Some are closer than others.”

In the new year, Shame head for the US and Europe. Steen feels they have learned go easier on themselves on the road. “I know we’re not that much older,” he says, “but looking back, at the time we were so young, everything was just new. Being given beer for free, you drink it. There’s no measurement yet, you haven’t worked out what you can do and what you can’t do.

But as things change you do longer sets, we do an hour and 15 minutes now so I can’t go out smoking 40 fags every night. It’s learning. Also, if somebody’s paying 20 quid for a ticket you want to make sure it’s as good a show as it can be.”

Shame play at The Leadmill, Sheffield on November 17 and Leeds Beckett University SU on November 19. shame.world