Lose Your Self feels like a surprise album. Obviously; it is. Released without prior marketing or promotion (a fact that every bit of subsequent spin has been all too quick to point out), it’s apparently in the name of art for art’s sake and chart ineligibility, however far that actually ends up going. Nevertheless, it’s the next step for Enter Shikari that wasn’t expected, but had to come sooner or later. That huge arena tour at the end of the year couldn’t be apropos of nothing, after all.
As for feeling like a surprise album, though? Well, compared to a more traditional rollout, Lose Your Self just doesn’t have the same magnitude. There’s nothing on this tracklist that leaps out too much; in fact, you can argue it’s most designed to become something dazzling for the live show. More damningly, though, Lose Your Self is the least adventurous that Enter Shikari have felt in some time. Even if there’s still no one who sounds quite like them—their electronic alt-rock and post-hardcore remains in a field of one, generally—it’s not presented with the cutting-edge exuberance of even their most recent work.
Fortunately, the best thing about modern Enter Shikari remains, namely a prevailing faith in the human spirit. Against a bleak backdrop of generational trauma and inherited burdens, a gestating light doesn’t get ignored, which is usually enough on its own to galvanise what it touches. demons stands out as the prime example on Lose Your Self, not just for how swift its non-defeatist philosophy is, but for how it takes the most done-to-death cliché in ‘introspective’ songwriting and gives it such a phenomenal tune-up. “Don’t run away from your demons / Boil up the bastards’ innards” singlehandedly topples huge chunks of this thematic thrust.
If you’re expecting that to last throughout the album, though… It’s definitely there in the peripherals, but it’s hard to ignore how piecemeal it can be this time around. It shouldn’t be, either, when breaking free of destructive cycles to forge something new and healthy is presented right away on the opening title track, almost as a thesis statement. But Lose Your Self simply doesn’t stay that high. You can liken it to Nothing Is True & Everything Is Personal, an album similarly yoked by planet-wide dourness, but its spirit to persist felt abundant and excitable. Here, songs like The Flick Of A Switch I. and it’s OK deliver tongue-in-cheek swipes that don’t amount to a grand impact. It’s most blatant on the three-part closer Spaceship Earth, where the finale Maestoso is supposed to be the hopeful switch that sees the album off into the expanse, but winds up as the ‘positive’ coda that’s required to be here.
It can make the album feel as though it’s going through the motions, and not pulling the thread as far as Enter Shikari tend to. Granted, there’s still a higher floor for this than many on the same track. The natural inventiveness of Enter Shikari will do that, even if, again, Lose Your Self operates on the knowledge that plugging in live bells and whistles will make these songs hit exponentially harder. Even so, the grimy rave-rock of the title track remains vintage Shikari, and the bright kineticism of Find Out The Hard Way…, demons and Shipwrecked! is as magnetic as ever. Conversely, it’d be nice to get a bit heavier again once in a while (it’d stop i can’t keep my hands clean from feeling like such an afterthought), but the scrubbed-clean style of current-day ‘Shikari isn’t wayward without it.
Even so, Lose Your Self as a package doesn’t lean as deep into the personality of its predecessors. Both Nothing Is True & Everything Is Personal and A Kiss For The Whole World fizzed and crackled incessantly, never stopping even in their quieter moments. Compare that to how Lose Your Self wants to replicate the angle but is significantly more moderate, and you see the step down. In a way, it’s almost like Enter Shikari want a ‘grounded’ version of themselves, without tossing aside the grand, global perspective that’s always had a place in their oeuvre. Rou Reynolds is still an inimitable frontman, both as a singer and in the sort of poetry he delivers, but there just feels…something that isn’t here.
Between that (and how ‘you know it when you hear it’ it is) and its less-than-explosive temperature, Lose Your Self simply can’t match the highs of its creators, no matter how much it wants to. It might even be the first Enter Shikari album that feels outright inessential. Even if The Mindsweep or The Spark don’t find themselves revisited often, they felt as though they still plotted a course forward. Lose Your Self, on the other hand, kind of just circles the drain, albeit with a wider radius befitting Enter Shikari’s higher baseline of creativity. Therefore, it’s not bad, but it is underplaying the talents of one of British rock’s true greats. If it’s only remembered as ‘The Surprise Album’ before long, that won’t come as a shock.
For fans of: Bring Me The Horizon, Muse, Lower Than Atlantis
‘Lose Your Self’ by Enter Shikari is out now on SO Recordings / Silva Screen Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
