ALBUM REVIEW: A Kiss For The Whole World – Enter Shikari
ENTER SHIKARI have always found themselves in a genre of one, carving out their own niche from rock, dance, pop and whatever else they felt like including at the time. It’s given them a particularly unique sound, even from the danceable metal of debut Take To The Skies. Across the years, they’ve only pushed the envelope further sonically and onstage, and their latest album A Kiss For The Whole World stays proud to that tradition as they’ve turned out another record chock full of dance rock grooves and arena-sized singalongs.
While last album Nothing Is True & Everything Is Possible divided fans and felt somewhat uneven, A Kiss For The Whole World is ENTER SHIKARI trimming most of the bloat and instead delivering just over half an hour of skyscraping hooks, from the opening title track and its triumphant declaration of universal love to Giant Pacific Octopus (i don’t know you anymore)’s shapeshifting from alt-pop to its jarring dance punk. In between, there’s plenty of shades SHIKARI have painted in before, including a couple of ambient/sampled interludes that, while they don’t particularly detract, don’t really add much to the experience either.
Rou Reynolds says the album was recorded in an old, off-grid farmhouse where their equipment was all powered by the sun itself; and it shows. Lead single (pls) set me on fire is an explosion of positivity, a spark of inspiration ignited to clear away nearly two years of writer’s block he’d experienced during the pandemic when their connection to fans through live music was severed. That feeling of triumph, reconnection and pure, emphatic joy echoes throughout the entire album; It Hurts might sound like a more negative title but it’s not, a driving drum pattern propelling the song from electro rock verses to giant, strobing choruses.
In fact, the opening run from the title track through to Leap Into The Lightning is nothing short of projectile-vomited positivity and energy, in the best way. The skittering breakbeats in the verses guarantee plenty of shapes thrown in the pit, while the earworm chorus will stay stuck in your head for days. Jailbreak does exactly that, a joyous busting out of enforced lockdowns and back to the jubilance of live music, powered by drum & bass inspired drumming and cries of “I won’t be held captive / Of my own opinion of who I am” that demand we reassess not only the world around us but who we are in this new world.
It’s not all triumph and dancing; feed yøur søul feels like an unnecessary break between thirds of the album that doesn’t really go anywhere in particular; maybe it’ll make for a moment for the band to catch their breath between songs in its pure electronic dance beat and samples but it doesn’t seem to serve a purpose here. Similarly, Bloodshot (Coda) repeats the motifs of the previous, excellent, Bloodshot but doesn’t actually add anything of its own, but does perhaps at least provide some reprieve before the thrilling Giant Pacific Octopus (i don’t know you anymore).
Ultimately, these are minor quibbles with an album that’s ENTER SHIKARI through and through. Idiosyncratic, impossible to imitate or pigeonhole, they make a racket entirely their own that, on A Kiss For The Whole World, serves a second wind after nearly three years of forced inactivity that almost entirely hits the mark and more than delivers on its brief of providing a joyous, celebratory return from one of the UK’s most celebrated and inimitable bands that continue to defiantly blaze their own trail.
Rating: 8/10
A Kiss For The Whole World is set for release on April 21st via SO Recordings/Ambush Reality.
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