ENTER SHIKARI
A Kiss For The Whole World (So)
St Albans’ Enter Shikari are now two decades down the line in their current incarnation, having changed their name from Hybryd in 2003, and the particular hybrid they’ve run with all this time hasn’t become any less preposterous on this, their seventh album, A Kiss For The Whole World.
On the other hand, there’s a case to be made that by calmly biding their time and displaying very little obvious interest in shifting musical fashions, the styles Rou Reynolds and bandmates smash together on A Kiss For The Whole World – bombastic-chorused emo-pop, crunchy midrange EDM, melodic trance – have been subject to some positive reappraisal.
The transitions between tracks can be almost comically jarring, like when the sputtering breakbeats of feed yøur søul (no explanation given for the lower-case title or its Scandinavian characters) is replaced by Dead Wood, whose Beatles-y strings are themselves absorbed into a sort of hyper pop-gone-rock maximalism. Either despite or because of Enter Shikari self-producing this album, it’s wildly OTT texturally, with Reynolds trying on vocal and musical styles like he’s in a fancy dress shop. Listeners not already on board with this idiosyncratic band might feel like they’ve been through a spin cycle by the end; fans will likely remain so.
words NOEL GARDNER