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Enter Shikari: "I really dislike hope just for hope's sake, false optimism"

Enter Shikari have been one of the most consistently interesting bands of the past two decades, and with their ambitious new album ‘Nothing Is True & Everything Is Possible’, they’ve outdone themselves.

When Rou Reynolds chatted to Dork in early March, the UK had yet to be fully gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic, but the Enter Shikari frontman’s description of their new album feels grimly prescient as he gives us the record’s mission statement.

Since hauling themselves out of St Albans in the mid-2000s, Enter Shikari have always been a band to weigh every word and note carefully, their wild brand of neuro-punk cradling delicately assembled themes. Rou is on a roll detailing his latest creation.

The current crisis has robbed the band of a string of release shows for bonkers new record ‘Nothing is True & Everything Is Possible’, but Shikari are making sure the album comes out on time to give us something to dance to, locked in our bedrooms for the foreseeable. The LP itself is a lurching, shapeshifting beast, a collage of everywhere the band have been so far and places they’re yet to go. The 20s waltz of the de facto title track, an actual symphony (more on that later) and two multipart suites; even for Shikari, this is a rollercoaster ride, taking the listener on a zig-zagging, dizzying tour of their past, present and future.

As always, amongst the climate collapse, crony capitalism, and other injustices that decorate their songs, there’s room for optimism.

“’The Dreamer’s Hotel’ is a space of peace and imagination and collaboration and community,” Rou expands on the album’s lead single. “It’s thinking about the future in a positive way and thinking about design and where we can go, human ingenuity and what we’re capable of in a peaceful and respectful manner. We don’t seem to check into those kinds of spaces really anymore,” he laments.

‘Satellites’ is a defiant love song where Reynolds aims for empathy with members of the LGBTQ+ community who face persecution for displaying affection publicly, in light of multiple violent attacks on same-sex couples in London in the past few years.

“For me, that’s one of the most important things, encouraging empathy in society, encouraging people to think about other people’s lives and situations, because as individuals in society, we’re often discouraged from that. It’s a very individualistic society that we live in and from the 1980s onwards from Thatcher and neoliberalism, she said herself, “the death of society” (“There is no such thing as society”). is just trying to get people to think about other people’s situations. And not always be in one’s own head with one’s own problems.”

“It was a dream come true really working with him, being able to learn from him was incredible,” Rou admits. It’s a stirring, moving piece, but it wouldn’t be Shikari without carrying some heavier, deeper meaning than mere mood music. “It’s trying to tell the tale of life on our planet, but just through music. In classical they call that ‘programme form’ where you’re trying to elicit or convey a certain thing just through the instrumentation,” he tells us.

“It starts off with these very sprightly strings, little flutters and little flurries of woodwind, the guitar and that’s supposed to be conveying the Cambrian explosion, the different species coming to life on our planet. Then it goes into the second section, which is a march, very literally the march of life if you imagine the evolutionary tree broadening out.” And then we come along and fuck everything up. “The last section is the Anthropocene and us affecting the planet in such a negative way and 50% of species being lost, and it ends in a big, horrible, distorted discordant mess.”

The past few years have seen the emergence of a vibrant, defiant youth climate movement, which in part inspired the rallying cry of the anthemic ‘Crossing the Rubicon’. “That was definitely inspired by the various youth climate change movements. I just felt so rejuvenated and re-energised. That youthful vigour and power, the sheer knowledge and passion that was on offer from these people was just really energising.”

In precarious times where things are changing by the hour and our whole way of living has been thrown into doubt, ‘Nothing is True & Everything is Possible’ is a mirror to our dysfunction, at times a torch of hope and at others an ominous tick on the doomsday clock. Breaking down walls and winning hearts with reckless abandon, Enter Shikari are still here, standing like statues.

Taken from the May issue of Dork. Enter Shikari’s album ‘Nothing is True & Everything is Possible’ is out now.

Words: Dillon Eastoe

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