This second full album from Enter Shikari will be eagerly anticipated by some…and greeted with a giant ‘Meh’ by others. Personally, I was looking forward to hearing it. The last album was very hit and miss for me, but contained some great songs showing more promise than most emerging bands at that time.
The intro, ‘Common Dreads’ goes on a bit, and robs you of the excellent album starter that would have been ‘Solidarity’s excellent trance-influenced opening. So unless you’re a fan of talky nonsense, skip directly to track two.
The first half of the album contains some great songs, the like of which you won’t have heard since the last Enter Shikari album. That’s not to say they’ve not moved on, but they definitely have a sound of their own. It’s this sense of identity that drags some of the duller parts of the album through. The vocals too, have undergone a change of sorts. There’s less reliance on the cookie-monster vocals of old; instead bringing a punky, shouty feel to the forefront, as well as a fair amount of spoken word segments, as displayed best on first single ‘Juggernauts’.
Easily the best song on the album is the sublimely weird ‘Wall’, a slow-building track about the similarities between a particular woman and…well…a wall. It’s mix of abstract lyrics, soaring chorus and upbeat musical backdrop makes for a truly excellent song. I could honestly listen to it all day.
‘Gap In The Fence’ and ‘Antwerpen’ are two juxtaposing tracks, that both bring something new to ES’s repertoire. The former being a slower, almost acoustic number, with the emphasis placed firmly on the vocals (which don’t disappoint, as you might expect) before building into the inevitable electro ending. The latter, however, goes in totally the opposite direction, and abandons the majority of the electronic wizardry in favour of a purer punk sound of The Bronx or Alexisonfire et al.
The album also ends strongly…with ‘Hectic’ being the clearest throwback to the days of old Enter Shikari, and ‘Fanfare For The Conscious Man’ bringing the whole thing to a neat climax.
The main problem with ‘Common Dreads’ is the amount of relatively pointless bits in it…with the title track, ‘Havok A’, ‘Havok B’ and ‘Halcyon’ doing not much else than getting in the way. ‘The Jester’ also could be accused of this, but does grow on you in the end, mainly because of it’s brilliant mid-section, if you manage to get past the first minute or so of nonsense. I defy you to not want to dance.
All in all, it’s a good album, with 5 or 6 or 7 essential songs on it, depending on your particular tastes. There isn’t quite something for everyone, but they don’t come far off.
Rating: 
