Enter Shikari – A Flash Flood of Colour Review

A Flash Flood of Colour opens with what on the face of it seem like some daft lyrics about a house in a field on a side of a cliff, but as the album progresses you realise that there might be more to this opening gambit than meets the ear.  The album tackles several political issues as well as some references to global warming and stuff like that; it would be easy to dismiss this as some kind of gimmick, but it makes for an album which surprises in both its musical and lyrical content.

Some of it is unintentionally comical, and some intentionally comical, but they have a good stab at tackling some of the bigger issues facing the world in modern times.  Though it makes you think that they’d do well to draft in Mike Skinner to do some of the talky bits, and maybe the odd lyric too.  At times it does sound like Hundred Reasons with Mike Skinner on vocals, and sometimes it sounds like their first album, Take To The Skies, which is a good thing.

“Arguing With Thermometers” is the stand out track on first listen – mixing in a bit of the old, erm, Shikaricore, with some catchy chorus which your favourite cool indie/dance band would be proud of, and even some intermissions which i’m told are dubstep.  This one tackles global warming and digging for oil in the arctic (seriously) with lyrics which can only be described as classic, and some which recall the outro to “Ether” by Gang of Four.  Exhibit A: “Shackleton would be rolling in his grave”

Exhibit B:

“So let me get this straight, as we witness the ice caps melt,
Instead of been spurred into changing our ways,
We’re gonna invest in military hardware to fight for the remaining oil that’s left beneath the ice?
Well, what happens when it’s all gone?
You haven’t thought this through, have you boys?”

A song with the title “Ghandi Mate, Ghandi” hints at being one of those songs with a great title which might disappoint when you actually listen to it.  We mentioned Mike Skinner earlier to demonstrate some of the lyrical delivery on this album, but this song starts out more like a Scroobius Pip speech.  And again the lyrics are somewhere between genius and comedy, especially with lines such as “Yabba dabba do one son…” followed by:

“You’re a communist
You’re a fucking utopianist
Ah here they come, the immersive labels
But they’re attempted fails”

It lives up to its good title though, especially after a couple of listens.

Then after all the heavy lyrical content, it’s refreshing to hear that “Warm Smiles Do Not Make You Welcome Here” is simply just a good track.  It probably has a deeper meaning but it’s not worth digging for it.

As usual we round off with a video, and here we feature the official video for “Arguing With Thermometers”: