Reviews of Enter Shikari's Take to the Skies and The Darjeeling Limited: Original Soundtrack

Enter Shikari
Take to the Skies
Ambush Reality

See, this is why you shouldn't let your children attend primary school. They might meet other music-loving lunatics, bond, and form a band, as did Rou Reynolds (vocals/electronics), Rob Rolfe (drums), and Chris Batten (bass). Well, three-quarters of a band--Rory Clewlow (guitar) joined them four years ago to top off Enter Shikari, a wonderful oddity from St. Albans, north of London. During hundreds of shows, making precocious teens even more precocious, they've honed their strange amalgam of punk, gothic, speed metal, trance, and electronica into a distinctive sound. From rave to raving, Take to the Skies is their first full-length album, self-produced over three weeks in autumn 2006.

Take any one aspect of their sound, and it might not be that interesting. But the punk shout-singing combined with soothing choir-boy melody, the layered grit-metal guitar and mesmeric synth loops, the alternating lyricism and attack mode on vocals and song writing--all that rockets our ears into an interesting realm.

The lads could take it a bit easier on the soccer-hooligan chants and the goth-screaming (though I'm sure it goes over better live). We get it, fellas, you're potentially scary blokes.

But these 17 tracks tip us off to the fact that you're also musical blokes veering toward a fun, vigorous art rock, and no matter how often you growl the f-word and scream, "Walk the plank!" I won't be convinced otherwise. And I heard that lilting ballad, "Adieu," hidden deep into your track list, you sneaky, elegiac devils. But don't worry, I won't tell anyone.

The Darjeeling Limited: Original Soundtrack
ABKCO Music & Records

Speaking of strange amalgams, later this month, Fox Searchlight rolls out Wes Anderson's latest film, and accompanying it comes this peculiar but refreshing swirl of 60s rock, vintage low-key psychedelia, music from the films of Satyajit Ray and Merchant-Ivory, and classical fare. The scenario is an odyssey involving three American brothers (Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman) alternately finding and losing themselves on a trip to India.