Live Review: Enter Shikari, Thornhill

The Dark Pool by Melbourne’s Thornhill is one of the albums of the year, and one of the better debut records of recent times. There is a real buzz around them right now, and their live show proves they are every bit worthy of the hype. The sound is enormous, and very faithful to the album, which dominates proceedings tonight, even though they released a mighty impressive EP a year and a half or so ago.

While the live renderings of the studio tracks are dead on the money, there is also a sense of tension, that heightened freneticism, to their live show. The studio versions are as polished as possible, while the live show has little imperfections, and this is of course the way it should be. What matters in the gig setting is the vibe, the energy, the connection between band and audience, and this band has all that in droves. Especially for such a young and relatively new group. 

The highlight is the dizzyingly emotional Red Summer, although their set is 45 minutes of power, passion and relentless quality, and they win the Enter Shikari crowd over beautifully.

Indeed, Thornhill and Enter Shikari might seem somewhat of an odd match on the surface, but it hardly matters, it is an open-minded crew here tonight that know that good music is good music. The sound of the long-running Brit act is hard to pin down, hard to put into a convenient genre box. It is not heavy, although they get quite metallic on occasion, just as there are soundscape-y moments as well. It is poppy, but it would be a fallacy to call them a pop band. It can’t really be deemed industrial or even electro-rock. It just is what it is: it’s Enter Shikari, and they exist in a genre of one.

Ultimately, their music and live show is refreshing and fun, and the very solid Thursday night crowd absolutely laps it up, singing along to just about every anthemic line of every song, and responding to frontman Rou Reynolds' histrionics in kind.

2019 was a memorable year for live music, and tonight remains a big part of that.