LIVE REVIEW + PHOTOS: Enter Shikari – Mountford Hall, Liverpool Guild Of Students, Liverpool – 29/11/2024

In a year that boasted ‘Pop Girl Summer’, much of the 2024 live music content we’ve been fed has revolved around huge stages, costume changes and singers putting their all into intense choreography helmed by backup dancer hordes. In smaller circles, certain acts’ names are enough to sell tickets by themselves without the explicit promise of extravagant spectacle, the name Enter Shikari alone indicative of the stellar live reputation they’ve built brick by brick over the last two decades. Seeing them in Liverpool’s Guild Of Students specifically is yet another draw in itself, somewhere a tad more intimate than the Wembleys and Slam Dunk Main Stages they’ve headlined of late. 

“We are not in fact a band, but travelling t-shirt salesmen,” Teenage Wrist’s Marshall Gallagher quips from the Guild of Students’ stage. It’s not true, mind, the Los Angeles two-piece’s expansive rock soaring effortlessly across the room in a way only musicians who know their craft inside and out know how to do. Gallagher’s choice to face sideways instead of directly at the audience seems small, but it opens up the stage, allowing the colorful strobe lights to take up more space and guitars to truly wash over and immerse all who are watching. Songs like Earth Is A Black Hole and Stoned, Alone chug along, creating a wall-of-sound sensory experience, while Sunshine and Yellowbelly provide some welcome sweetness to go along with the crunch. It’s all very lovely, although noticeably an amuse-bouche for what’s to come.

Enter Shikari may be famed for being one of the country’s best live acts, but it’s not until you’re seeing them in a room the size of Mountford Hall that their science experiment-like concotion of sounds becomes most apparent. The crashing Bloodshot opens proceedings, which balances time-ticking urgency with out-and-out fun. Its guitars assault your ears while synth and bass shake your chest, all while punters heeding every command for more (from ringmaster extraordinaire Rou Reynolds) with gusto from the off. Shikari’s fluency in the language of dance music (which they’ve had since the early days of their career) comes out in full force in person, using their offshoot Shikari Sound System reworkings to give the triumphant climaxes of these new songs a victory lap. The heavy synths and accompanying strobed visuals mean it often leans more to the side of a rave than a rock gig, but then the riffs crash in, pits open and the pendulum swings to the other side again, atmosphere completely electric wherever Shikari decide to take it.

Digging beneath the atmosphere, it’s not the most orthodox of setlists. This is the second headline tour for their A Kiss For The Whole World record—it’s in smaller venues than the first, the number of songs trimmed by almost a third and album singles like (pls) set me on fire, It Hurts and Jailbreak omitted in favour of deeper cuts, which are hit-or-miss in terms of impact. The dance-forward, at times sinister Leap Into The Lightning (pushed back in the set due to a technical blip) more than deserves its airing, but Dead Wood fares less well, its slow build and underwhelming payoff the one moment all night where momentum meets a roadblock. goldfĭsh~  is without a shadow of a doubt the highlight of the newer tracks, its hefty Shikari Sound System remix bleeding into the equally hard The Jester one of the night’s peaks in terms of energy (despite accompanying stage visuals showing the frankly horrific transformation of said fish into said clown).

Focus on recent material is a given, but this is an Enter Shikari show. Known for leaving no album behind when it comes to crafting their setlists, all facets of their discography are represented, something the crowd absolutely laps up. The Dreamer’s Hotel, The Last Garrison, Arguing With Thermometers (complete with characteristic principled intro about how such discussions of climate change are more relevant than ever) and Sorry, You’re Not A Winner act as the reliable throng of room-shakers, while Antwerpen, Destabilise and main set closer Radiate are prime examples of the band’s unpredictable nature. The most baffling inclusion is choosing one-off single Stop The Clocks to open the encore, but it turns into a total party, Rou even donning comically large sunglasses to mark the occasion. The final notes of a triumphant A Kiss For The Whole World x ring out, a cap on yet another example of the excellence of Enter Shikari, even though this particular tour feels like a slight afterparty for their last.

Words by Georgia Jackson

Photos by Will Robinson (Instagram)