Tag Archives: common dreads

#1284: Enter Shikari – Step Up

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Enter Shikari’s ‘Step Up’ is the last representative of the band’s Common Dreads album, their second, released back in 2009, that’ll be showing up on the blog here. If I was at this point in this series maybe a decade ago, there would have been a couple more posts for other songs on there. Namely, ‘Solidarity’ and ‘The Jester’. But there was a point when I would have my phone on shuffle and, despite the whole purpose of shuffle being random in the song selection, those two songs would start to play on almost constant basis. And as the years went on, I slowly fell out of favour with other numbers like ‘Gap in the Fence’ and ‘Hectic’. But the posts for those two up and available to read, so you can see my thoughts from a time when I was properly into them.

But through it all, ‘Step Up’ has stood tall while those fell to the figurative wayside. With its place as the third song on Common Dreads, it helps to further establish the mood of the album coming after the titular intro track and ‘Solidarity’. But while ‘Solidarity’ acts as a call for unity and is something for the fans with its musical/lyrical callbacks to refrains and motifs from their previous album, ‘Step Up’ is the slap in the face – telling people to wake up and pay attention to the injustice that’s happening on the regular around the world. Vocalist Rou Reynolds, alongside bassist and backing vocalist Chris Batten, critique the passivity I think the majority of us are prone to when we witness something happening horrible on the news and rally to us that, by doing a little research and taking action, we can at least play a part in making a difference. However small the result may be, the main point is that an attempt was made.

The track begins with its frantic synths, spilling over from the preceding track while that comes to a close, that soon make way for drummer Rob Rolfe’s thunderous entrance. It’s not too long that, after a dominant roar from Reynolds, proceedings properly get going, with he and Batten doing a respective call and response, shouting versus melodic singing dynamic – a thing that was very much a staple in those earlier Enter Shikari albums. For a post-hardcore type of band, they were never too proud to showcase their prowess at harmonies. There’s plenty of those to latch on to here also. I guess another notable part is the spoken word bridge Reynolds delivers nearing halfway through. It’s not the last time you’ll be hearing that sort of vocal delivery on the record if you’re listening from front to back. In fact, the very next song contains it too. But it’s there that Reynolds bluntly states that we don’t know how good we’ve got it while other people are suffering, screaming his frustration which then leads into the song’s second half. It’s great stuff. This is the last from Common Dreads on here. It’s not the last of Enter Shikari.

#933: Enter Shikari – No Sleep Tonight

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If I was writing this to you on the home computer rather than my personal laptop, I could tell you the exact date I downloaded Enter Shikari’s second album. I guess I was something of a follower; I owned a physical copy of Take to the Skies, and if the first single ‘Juggernauts’ was anything to go by, Common Dreads was going to be massive. And it was. At least to me anyway, I think a lot of critics weren’t feeling it at the time. I think it goes down as their best these days.

I have to admit, ‘No Sleep Tonight’ didn’t make that big an impression on me on that first listen through. It was probably a track I’d forgotten about until its music video started playing on MTV2. It was going to be the second single. Through repeated watches and listens, the track inevitably seeped into my consciousness. The video’s entertaining enough. A narcissistic businessman bumps into frontman Rou Reynolds as they pass each other on the street, and for revenge the band and a crowd of fans gather in his back garden and play a concert until the dead hours of the night. It certainly depicts a disdain for those types of people, a theme that runs throughout a lot of their music. But the track is properly about wondering how scientists accept money from companies to deny climate change and are still able to sleep at night. Enter Shikari also care about the environment, another major theme in a lot of their material.

Listening to this through headphones rather than the TV speakers particularly changed my feelings on the whole track. Obviously, there would be, I hear you murmur in your heads. But to the teenager I was then, I didn’t understand. It begins with a bit of rhythmic ambiguity. When the bass initially starts playing, you might be thrown off thinking that it’s come in at the completely wrong time. The drums start to kick in though, and things start to properly set off. What I really, really enjoy about this track though is the music during the chorus. There are no cymbal strikes during them, so it’s like this huge glossy wall of guitars and synths blaring at you while Reynolds belts out the refrain. You’ve got to love the sudden key change that occurs for the final choruses, cheesy as they may be, but you may notice that Reynolds subtly changes the melody of the refrain so he doesn’t reach a high note. Got to do what you’ve got to do to save your voice, but I sometimes wish he did.

#679: Enter Shikari – Juggernauts

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2009. That definitely feels like eleven years ago. I was in my third year of secondary school going through the motions. In the midst of all the education was happening, Enter Shikari announced their second album Common Dreads was to be released. ‘Juggernauts’ was the first single.

It was a long time ago that I wouldn’t be able to detail everything I remember when hearing the track for the first time. Think I recall noting the difference in the tone of Rou Reynolds’ voice – there was something of a heftiness to it that wasn’t so much there on Take to the Skies – and he looked much different than he did two years prior. Aging does do that naturally so that shouldn’t be much a surprise but to fourteen-year-old me I thought he looked like a totally different person. The music video would be able to provide evidence for my reaction back then, but it’s been blocked worldwide. Well, at least in my country.

Right out the gate though, ‘Juggernauts’ lives up to its name with an introduction that charges forward with a hectic synthesizer riff and pummeling drums. From there Reynolds, with added backing vocals from bassist Chris Batten, addresses in his words ‘the theme of corporate power, the brute force they have and the ability they have to do literally anything they want’. He said that in a track-by-track commentary of the album which I may as well embed below.

The first verse Reynolds doesn’t so much sing but speak which saw various publications instantly compare the vocal delivery to Mike Skinner of The Streets. The band weren’t too pleased about this. But you can’t really blame the media for pointing it out. I don’t think I was a big fan of it initially. I grew to like it in the end. I much more a fan of the singing parts though. They possess a very strident melody which I can get into every time I hear it.

My iPod #506: Enter Shikari – Hectic

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Let’s get back to business.

“Hectic” by Enter Shikari is another about the good times of the past – but this time focuses on staying round at the houses of various friends listening to music, playing Sonic and Golden Axe on a Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) and carelessly running and jumping across the rooftops in the town. Like the last song I talked about in this series, the track also wishes to go back to those days of innocence and naivety as those of today aren’t so great in comparison. “Things aren’t right” as it is sung in the bridge before the final choruses, and the dread of today has left the narrator feeling as if they are own their own and nothing will be able to change the situation.

Being the penultimate song on Common Dreads, the track provides the rush of pure excitement containing blaring keyboard blasts, vocal interchanging between singer Rou Reynolds, guitarist Rory Clelow during the singalong choruses and an overall soundscape that will have you lunging around the room in various directions. Though there is a brief but poignant moment in which bassist Chris Batten with his choirboy-ish vocals takes lead in the midst of it all, it isn’t long before the hurrying drums and guitars enter to bring the track to a thrilling end.

My iPod #405: Enter Shikari – Gap in the Fence

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Next Monday post-hardcore group Enter Shikari release what will be the band’s fourth album “The Mindsweep“. Can I say that I am hyped about this? Not really. My interest in their music has faded as the years pass; had I not searched the group up on Google earlier this week, I would definitely not have known that a new album was coming soon. It also may be due to the dub-step stuff they began to incorporate into their music. It’s a shame. I used like to like them quite a lot. But I believe “Common Dreads” was their last album that I was excited for, and learnt to appreciate after listening to it a few times.

“Gap in the Fence”, about subservience and taking things at face value (in Rou Reynolds’ words, not mine), is a track that builds and becomes bigger as it goes on. Initially beginning as one of the slower and quieter ones on the album, Reynolds sings on his lonesome with an acoustic guitar; soft percussion and pretty vocal harmonies occur soon after. It is halfway through when the music somehow then evolves into this glistening house/trance beat where Rou makes it clear that he needs ‘to get out of here’. Many, many times. But it all results in a climactic finish consisting of loud guitars, a mix of shouting and singing, and a final word that stretches out for a few seconds before coming to an emphatic stop. “GRANNTEEEEEEEEEEEEEED-UH.” I feel Reynolds’ anger just listening to it,

It then segues into the next track “Havoc B”, but that’s besides the point.

“Gap in the Fence” is a sick one. Very nice.

In this video – at 6:50 or so – the band talk about the song. You might want to watch the whole thing if you want to know the background behind each individual track on “Common Dreads”.