THE ENEMY – MUSIC FOR THE PEOPLE

The Enemy – the new darlings of the NME. This young band from Coventry, England, had a runaway success with their first album We’ll Live and Die in These Towns, reaching Gold and Platinum sales in various territories, and leading them around the world in the company of such UK giants as Oasis, Manic Street Preachers, Kasabian and Stereophonics. This their second album opens with a noisy folk soundscape of whale-song guitars, screeching harmonicas and penny-whistle, leading into Elephant Song, a riff-driven affair that solidifies their heavily Zepellin-influenced brand of British big-time rock. The album maintains this highly-polished modern take on classic guitar jams throughout, pinnacling with the glamorous but vacuous single Sing When You’re In Love. Their enthusiasm for the grand, corporate-scale rock treatment is understood, but somehow all of this doesn’t quite feel like real music – escaping the medium of free expression through song and painting instead a gallery of corporate-fueled postulations that feel irritatingly removed, and manicured for the masses. Tom Clarke’s pristine rock warbling is well-honed, but empty of grit or any real grounding in the heartthrob of rock n roll singing. Unfortunately listening to this record one may ask the question of them-self, haven’t we heard enough of this stuff?

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