Enter Shikari Talk Being Underdogs And Dealing With Haters On Twitter

Enter Shikari have seen a lot come and go in their 12 years together as a band. The MySpace era, the relevance of publications that once served as their kingmakers and a myriad of bands attempting to steal their thunder and ultimately falling by the wayside are to name but a few.

The band’s pinpoint-specific mix of post-hardcore, electronica and alternative rock may have made them borderline uncategorisable, but it has certainly made them favourites at festivals on a global scale and a band that, while divisive, have found themselves with one of the more fervent and vocal fanbases within the heavier spectrum.

This week sees the band back in Australia once again in support of The Mindsweep, their fourth album overall, alongside Canberran ex-pats Hands Like Houses. With a moment to himself after soundchecking in Perth, lead vocalist Rou Reynolds takes a look at just how far the band have come since first setting foot on Australian soil in the scorching summer of 2008.

Watch: Enter Shikari – Anaesthetist

Music Feeds: This marks the sixth time overall that you’ve been to Australia. Can you recall your first trip out here?

Rou Reynolds: Oh dear, questions about memory… [laughs]

MF: If it helps at all, it was the 2008 Big Day Out. An afternoon slot, and all you guys had out was [debut album, 2007’s] Take to the Skies…

RR: Of course, yeah. You should be in charge of our tell-all biography. [laughs] Yeah, it was mad. It was one of those places where we didn’t really know what to expect. People seemed to get what we were doing straight away. They were on our frequency – it was unbelievable. You haven’t been able to keep us away ever since.

MF: We’re much further down the line now – in January, you dropped your fourth album, The Mindsweep. Have the songs developed at all while playing them live? Do you tend to pick up on different things depending on how they’re being performed?

RR: You never really know how a song’s gonna feel, how it’s gonna translate. You just do it – no matter how much practice you put in, or how much detail is in the sequencer and programming bit, you never know how it’s going to work – indeed, if it is going to work.

We’re doing about five tracks off The Mindsweep, though, and it’s been going really well. The tracks are all quite diverse in nature – they bring out a different side with each song. It’s really encouraging.

MF: In terms of the creative process, people know what Enter Shikari sounds like now. That’s why Take to the Skies was such a surprise to so many – it was a clean-slate and no-one really saw it coming. Being four albums in, there’s an expectation and a style associated with the band. Is it a challenge now, to not become predictable – especially when one of the band’s calling cards is being unpredictable?

RR: It’s a really interesting subject – how much do you take into account your audience’s expectations? There’s no nice way to say this, but as a band we’ve generally tried to keep away from them – we try to ignore anything that will stagnate us or stunt our growth. That’s the only way to keep it honest, really.

I think a lot of bands get to a stage where their audience is almost dictating what they should be putting out. You have to pander a lot of the time – it’s the evils of capitalism. It’s a funny line to walk, but we make music that we’re confident in and are genuinely excited by. I like to think that people respond to that.

Watch: Enter Shikari – Slipshod

MF: As a lyricist, you’ve often been very upfront about social and political issues. It can often be a catch-22 with musicians discussing such a thing – if they don’t say anything, they can often be called out for remaining silent; whereas if they do say something, they’ll be told their opinion is invalid because they’re a musician or an entertainer or what have you. How have you found the general response to the kind of things that you tackle in your songs?

RR: There’s always been an interesting spectrum of reactions. Overwhelmingly, though, I’ve found it positive – I feel like there’s such a need for it. We’re obviously not a hardcore punk band, but we came from that DIY scene. It’s in our nature.

It feels like there’s a real lack of genuine music right now that will stand up for the oppressed, that approaches social issues and provides commentary on them. In that respect, we feel as though we’ve really slipped comfortably into a gap.

Our music doesn’t really slide comfortably into any scene – we’ve always felt like outsiders and underdogs. I think people connect with that. There’s always the negatives, of course, which always interests me.

MF: That’d be especially prominent, given you’re a very active Twitter user. Has that side of things impacted on you, especially as Twitter has gotten bigger and bigger over the years?

RR: I love it. You’re not just fed positive reactions, just from fans and people that know what the band is all about and things like that. You also get the people that completely don’t, and contact you just to tell you how much they hate your music or how wrong you are about your stance on a certain thing.

I think it’s a lot more realistic – I think you can find yourself in a bubble when you’re in a band. Your ego can get massive, and that’s when it gets dangerous. You can start taking yourself too seriously. To me, Twitter’s a lot more like real life. I’m not on a pedestal. I’m contactable, I’m approachable, I’m vulnerable.

Listen: Enter Shikari – The Appeal & The Mindsweep Part I

MF: How do setlists get decided these days? Do you have a set grid of songs that you have to work with; or is it a little more spontaneous than that?

RR: It’s really hard to decide on them these days. We’re at a point where we have more songs to choose from than ever before. There’s always going to be people that are disappointed. It’s pretty excruciating.

I mean, we don’t want to be one of those bands that abandons their old material entirely – we still get a lot out of quite a few of those songs. We understand the connection people have to it. We try and change in songs here and there just to keep things fresh for us.

MF: What would you say is the most obscure Enter Shikari song that you still know how to play?

RR: Oh, man…[laughs] I’ll need a minute! Really racking the archives here… [pause] I mean, there’s B-sides and some lesser-known album tracks that are still in circulation. There’s one song called We Can Breathe in Space, They Just Don’t Want Us to Escape. It’s on our original demo, which came out before the album. We actually gave it a run-through at a rehearsal just recently. We could still just get through it. [laughs] We just keep trying to bring back a few of the golden oldies every now and then.

MF: There’s certainly a few distinct fan favourites throughout each album. Does that influence the direction of how the setlist pans out?

RR: Look, I actually hate the idea of being defined by only a few songs – or worse, one song. I’m sure most people in that situation would agree. We’ve been pretty lucky in that regard that it hasn’t so much been the case for us. I mean, there’s Sorry, You’re Not a Winner, which is still probably the song we’re best known for – but we’ve actually stopped playing it.

MF: Really? That’s a bold move.

RR: [laughs] Yeah, I dunno. It seems to have been carried on by rock clubs, which is amazing and we’re thankful for, but we felt like we weren’t doing it justice. It didn’t feel honest anymore – we were just going through the motions. It’s on the substitute bench for now, but luckily it hasn’t caused much of a stir. Maybe we were building up in our heads too much.

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Enter Shikari’s Australian Tour continues this weekend, grab the deets below.

Watch: Enter Shikari – Sorry, You’re Not A Winner