Ollie Chanin’s Single “Shame” Will Have You Questioning Everything
Shame, shame, shame. The refrain on Ollie Chanin’s first single from his new project burns itself into your mind, changing and modulating, coming back and back again. In this way, the song evokes its titular emotion, the word repeated by one voice, then many voices, layered, affected and dripping. Shame is self-produced, and Chanin’s ear for both melody and rhythm make for a massive soundscape where it’s hard to tell quite where the music stops and the voice begins.
Blurring that line is part of the point, it would seem. As is confusing what it means to be good instead of wicked, for things to be right instead of wrong, to be proud instead of shameful: ”do what you know/you don’t know what’s right, cause it feels so wrong/you born a wicked man, all you need to learn is shame, shame, shame.” It’s a question of what you learn vs. what you know, what you say vs. what you feel, and Chanin seems to take it all and blend it into a sound that makes you question everything, repeating it over and over in your head, now unsure.
– Henry Whittier-Ferguson
