Cutscene – Shrine (Give Me a Chance)
Manchester four-piece Cutscene, whom we covered back in Concrete Line (W18), are now on their second single from their debut EP A Piece of Life, due July 10 on Heist or Hit. “Shrine (Give Me a Chance)” is a bigger swing than “Concrete Line” was, and the ambition is mostly earned.
The song is built around a structural split. The first half is warm and aspiring: June morning sun, white rays on a face, an offer to show someone the world. The register is almost hymnal, and the parenthetical title does its job, the “give me a chance” sitting in pop-cliché territory deliberately, imitating the sugary vocabulary of idealised love. Then the perspective lurches. A man on a horse stares down from his plinth; an urchin’s collar hangs in a spider webbed fist; the streets bleed dark under an endless sky. The person who was reaching toward romance is now refusing it outright: “I don’t want your love, I don’t want to fly.” The band say the song switches between the two partners at a wedding where one is fleeing, and that framing holds up: you can hear the same moment described from two entirely incompatible emotional positions.
What makes it work is that neither voice gets to win cleanly. The closing section pulls back toward need, “I need your love, one more time”, but the declaration lands differently after the rupture, more like desperation than conviction. Seb Mason, Jack Ellis, Jacob Shotton, and Ollie Little have a talent for structure that earns its drama rather than just announcing it, and that was true of “Concrete Line” too. I’m curious where the remaining two EP tracks land.
Tour Dates Europe
- Jun. 6 / New York, NY, USA / Governors Ball Music Festival
- Jun. 6 / Brooklyn, NY, USA / Baby’s All Right
- Jun. 11 / Hradec Kralove, CZ / Rock For People Festival
- Jun. 13 / Hilvarenbeek, NL / Best Kept Secret
- Jun. 20 / Glasgow, UK / TRNSMT Festival
- Jul. 3 / Werchter, BE / Rock Werchter
- Jul. 3-5 / Arras, FR / Main Square Festival
- Jul. 11 / Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, FR / Pete The Monkey Festival
- Jul. 24 / Sheffield, UK / Tramlines Festival
- Jul. 25 / Abingdon, UK / Truck Festival
- Jul. 31 / Derbyshire Dales, UK / Y Not Festival
- Aug. 8 / Newquay, UK / Boardmasters Festival
- Aug. 22 / Saint Pölten, AT / Frequency Festival
- Aug. 23 / Istanbul, TR / Babylon Soundgarden Festival
- Aug. 27 / Oost-Vlieland, NL / Into The Great Wide Open Festival
- Aug. 29 / Reading, UK / Reading Festival
