Enter Shikari - Common Dreads
By: Nolan Maloney
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Wednesday July 08, 2009
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The annual Coachella Music Festival in Indio, CA has a history of throwing at least one band on the bill that nobody wants to hear. The festival breakdown is roughly halfed by skinny-legged, navel gazing hipsters and half-naked, sweaty dance enthusiast, relegated to their specific tents. While there is some cross-over, there’s generally not a realistic audience segment skewed towards the hair care commercial ballads of James Blunt (2006), the dad-rock of Fountains of Wayne (2007), or the emo-hardcore-electronica mess of Enter Shikari (2008). So I’m guessing the crowd at the Mojave tent was rather slight, especially since they were up against, y’know, Prince.
They probably would have had a better chance at the 2009 Coachella, initially apparent because Prince did not play, but especially since they’ve been working on a more studied sonic approach on Common Dreads. Like fellow Britons (and NME darlings) The Horrors, Enter Shikari decided that while their initial album, Take to the Skies, was fun and loud, it was very stupid, and that further extrapolation on their sound would be pointless. So they examined the music of their predecessors and emulated their sounds, like the very best parrots, to mixed results.
Previous Enter Shikari fans, take note: your band has changed, but the energy and intensity is still there, perhaps even more so. Album opener “Solidarity” has lead singer “Rou” Reynolds screeching and growling into the night as if nothing has changed, and “Zzzonked” even dips into gregarious nu-metal territory. And perhaps I’m getting old and turning uncool, but these are definitely the low-points of the album—Rou’s screams are certainly brutal, but they often don’t match the music. If they had kept this trend throughout, the album would fail. However, whereas “Take to the Skies” was a one-key affair, Enter Shikari are more prepared and prone to experimentation on Common Dreads.
The most obvious addition to Enter Shikari’s new sound is Rou sort of rapping on at least a quarter of the tracks. Yes, yes, he does sound like Mike Skinner of the Streets, and they both talk about Stella Artois, but Rou can certainly hold his own. And guess what, it actually fits with the rest of the music, especially with the introduction of dubstep amidst the center of the LP. The music itself has moved away from the generic shred of most hardcore to a more complex grunge-y metal thing, reminiscent of a really youthful Shellac or a meat-headed Fugazi. I mean meat-headed in the most complimentary way, by the by.
So it begs the question: If Enter Shikari stumbled across this great new sound when they were recording, why didn’t they embrace it wholly and continue to throw a few clunky hardcore tracks into the mix? It feels like this disc is a bridge from their old, laborious sound to their shiny, new, and interesting sound. There’s a couple excellent tracks on Common Dreads, to be sure, but as a whole, it’s merely decent. If they continue evolving, their next album won’t just be promising—it’ll be a promise fulfilled.
