Tag Archives: enter shikari

#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.

#1251: Enter Shikari – Sorry, You’re Not a Winner

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Back in the mid-2000s, MTV2 had this show called “Text, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll” where viewers could request what they wanted to see on the channel via their phones and have some banter with the MTV employee/moderator person who went by the name of ‘Moo’, it might have just been ‘Cow’ actually, and had an avatar of the animal next to their messages, all of which appeared on the TV screen. The video for ‘Sorry, You’re Not a Winner’ was showing up on the channel for what felt like every day when it was really popping off, but the chyron that displayed the song name and who it was by was never appearing. Cow admitted one day that the people of MTV2 offices didn’t know what the song was called. So 11-year-old me, with my little cheap mobile, texted in, “It’s called Sorry You’re Not a Winner”. I can’t remember how I even knew that. Must have shown on Kerrang! or something, where they knew the business. Cow said thanks, and I swear from that moment on whenever the video was up, “ENTER SHIKARI – SORRY YOU’RE NOT A WINNER” was popping up on the screen, exactly like in the embedded video above. So you’re welcome, former employees of MTV2.

‘Sorry…’ was the first Enter Shikari track I heard, and I think from the backstory provided in the previous paragraph you can gather that it was because of the music video. The band play in a small, small room amongst a crowd of rabid fans. The energy bounces off band to crowd, the energy’s reciprocated and mayhem breaks loose. It’s quite the classic. The more times the video showed, the more I got into the song. A bit of a Stockholm syndrome thing going on, I guess. But I actually did come to really appreciate it for the great track it was and is. And as 2006 turned into 2007 and more Enter Shikari singles kept on appearing on the TV, it was like “Well, I like all of these.” So I was glad to get that copy of Take to the Skies whenever I did. Probably a birthday or something.

In the almost 20 years I’ve been listening to this song, I’ve never even stopped to think what it could be about. Is that so bad? Guess to some it would be. Just from reading online, some interpretations say it’s a track about gambling addiction. That could very well be the case. But while people are thinking about what the lyrics mean, I’ll be out here headbanging to the riffs and air-drumming. A lot of great moments happen in the track that always scratch the auditory itch. Like the three claps that come in before the verses. The sudden changes between the screams and singing that Rou Reynolds pulls off throughout. The harmonies by bass guitarist Chris Batten, and the back-and-forths between the two vocalists. There’s a reason why it is Enter Shikari’s signature tune. And unlike a lot of similar songs from that era, it’s aged incredibly well.

#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.

#674: Enter Shikari – Jonny Sniper

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‘Jonny Sniper’ was the last single to be released from Enter Shikari’s Take to the Skies album in 2007. At that time I was twelve and just about finishing my first year in secondary school. I thought the band were cool and, again, their videos were a usual feature on MTV2. And that’s how I got to know this track right here.

After all these years I never realised that the song has a strong environmental theme to it. It’s really obvious when you read/see them. I’ve always enjoyed it mainly because of its somewhat uplifting tone and the vocals between Rou Reynolds and bassist Chris Batten. Looking at the album’s Wiki page, it is classed as post-hardcore and trance(?). And there are a lot of post-hardcore elements in this track. Those double-bass pedal drums and the chugging guitars in the mix add to it. But generally ‘Sniper’ is one of the more poppier (I guess) sounding songs on here. And I don’t think that’s any detriment to the group’s usual style. It’s cool that they can mix their harder material with the almost light-hearted matter too.

I don’t really follow the group so much anymore. Time goes on and music tastes change or whatever. I’m taken to a time when I was a jumped up teenager who had more energy for things. I’ll check out a new song if it’s out. Skies and Common Dreads are in my library to this day though and won’t leave any time soon.