I wasn’t a fan of Enter Shikari until recently. A term which is vastly and lazily overused,
‘crossover’ music held no appeal to me when they debuted in 2007. While by definition not a genre itself,
crossover was something that had been done to death: take a dash of Genre A and
add to a bowl of Genre B, simmering until the public gets bored… All I heard
when their debut, Take To The Skies
was released was an album of pseudo-hardcore riffs with that one keyboard sound
they use in trance music played over the top.
It wasn’t until I saw the video for ‘Arguing With Thermometers’ that I
saw how far they had come. Genres now
woven seamlessly together rather than just played atop one another, and the
song had more bite and satire. Debut
album aside, I was converted.
As much as they are now established as one of Britain’s
biggest rock bands this side of Biffy Clyro, they are still this side of Biffy and as such haven’t
really sold enough records to justify playing the Arena. I was curious.
Newcastle’s worst venue was less awful than usual tonight,
with about half of the floor in use and the side seats curtained off it was
more intimate than the cavernous shell that this place normally becomes. I arrive as opening band Astroid Boys are
starting and immediately wish I had stayed in the pub for another half an
hour. There are six of them on stage: 3
rappers, two of whom shout the last word of every line while the other does all
the work; a guy on turntables, who seems to cue all of the music up on a laptop
and never changes the record (whichever way you cut it, this constitutes
cheating at a live show); a drummer, who is decent; and a guitar player who
embellishes their songs with power chords and looks embarrassed to be there. They look and sound like charvers and are
truly awful.
Next up is Lower Than Atlantis, whose singer Mike Duce
bounds onstage full of energy and attitude, but whose set is less than
brilliant. Their last two albums have
seen a marked change of direction into more overt pop-rock territory and while
2014’s Lower Than Atlantis boasted
some fine songs, this year’s Safe In
Sound is dull. Their entire set is
drawn from these two albums and while the songs are made for this kind of
venue, they are hardly the best material this band has produced. They play well, but the whole things feels too
polished, and I maintain that ‘Emily’ is a boyband song with the guitars turned
only slightly up…
The crowd has padded out a bit when Glen Miller-style swing
and a First World War-style countdown plays over the PA, announcing 10 minutes
until The Spark commences. 10 minutes
later, Shikari have Entered and opened with recent single ‘The Sights’. It’s infectious, catchy, and the audience
laps it up. It’s testament to the
standard of their recent output that songs from The Spark and The Mindsweep
are the best on display, with a punky ‘Take My Country Back’ (probably the most
uplifting chorus of the year), the flawless stylistic fusion of ‘Rabble Rouser’,
and a stunning ‘The Last Garrison’ highlights of the set.
Despite a sample malfunction causing a false start during ‘Undercover
Agents’, which the band handles with good humour despite the obvious complexity
of restarting the song, they are impeccable.
Rou Richards is in fine voice and his livewire performance suits the
large venue. Effortlessly switching from
his regular croon to rap, falsetto, and a low baritone, he is a box of vocal
tricks and this adds textures and a sense of humour to what might otherwise be
very dry, political material. He’s ably supported
by impeccably-dressed bass player Chris Batten.
Although they use the None-More-U2 cliché of Reynolds and
drummer Rob Rolfe moving to the back of the venue for a couple of numbers
(ballads ‘Airfield’ and ‘Adieu’), they have enough charm to pull this off, and
when you can go straight into a song as good as ‘Anaesthetist’ (a war cry
against for-profit healthcare) you can get away with such things. Reynolds then introduces the “quickfire round”,
comprising of 4 songs in 8 minutes; we get ‘Sorry You’re Not A Winner’, ‘Sssnakepit’,
‘…Meltdown’, and ‘Antwerpen’ and the place goes mental.
Despite my reservations about them playing a venue of this
size, it’s clear that Shikari are a stadium band without a stadium
audience. Their stage set up and
lightshow are impressive and befitting a large arena. They create a party atmosphere while hitting
you with the sort of irony and subtext that the likes of Pitchshifter used to
toss out at will. They end with a
riff-heavy ‘Zzzonked’ before returning for the euphoric ‘Redshift’ and close
with catchy recent single ‘Live Outside’.
Enter Shikari offer a positive message, a good time vibe, a
sense of humour, a fantastic back catalogue, and a furious political
message. They are one of the few bands
not to rest on their laurels and repeat themselves. In many ways, it’s a shame that they aren’t
filling venues like this but as long as they can play them at all, I’ll take
what I can get and I recommend you do too.
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