Artist: The Enemy
Title: Live At Ricoh Arena
Label: Warner
Genre: Indie
Bitrate: 215kbit av.
Time: 00:27:14
Size: 43.97 mb
Rip Date: 2009-04-26
Str Date: 2009-04-27
01. It's Not OK 4:22
02. Had Enough 3:16
03. We'll Live And Die In These Towns 3:49
04. This Song Is About You 5:26
05. Away From Here 2:58
06. You're Not Alone 7:23
Release Notes:
English LPCM (48kHz 16bit 2Ch)
In this of all weeks, it canÆt go unmentioned that the Enemy are not
the first band to emerge from Coventry with something to say about what
it means to be British today. The second album by Tom ClarkeÆs
diminutive trio appears six days after a reconvened Specials take to
the road once more. Thirty years ago the sort of adrenalised suburban
disaffection that characterised the EnemyÆs debut album, WeÆll Live and
Die in These Towns, was everywhere ù everywhere, that is, apart from,
um, Coventry, where 2-Tone was percolating. What would Tom Clarke do if
you pointed out the irony in all this? If he could reach that high, he
would probably clonk you on the nose.
That irony is currently of no use to the Enemy is intimated by the
title of their second album. They couldnÆt call it Urban Hymns, but
Music for the People is close ù and, at times, appropriate for an album
that often strives for the flaccid everyman pretensions of the Verve.
Elephant Song and No Time for Tears are passable in this regard; less
so Last Goodbye, which, down to the flat-packed string arrangements and
obligatory reference to ôleaving this world behindö, is a Richard
Ashcroft power ballad in all but name.
Interspersed among those songs, however, are signs of what Music for
the People might have been had the communal memory of Britpop been
excised from it. When songs such as Checkout Girls and 51st State show
the Enemy emulating the breathless provincial spleen of those
late-1970s punk combos the Members and Skids, they really fly. But what
about the tenth-hand sentiments? Can Clarke really be unaware of all
the singers before him ù from New Model Army to The The ù who saw fit
to tell us that ôThis is the 51st state of the USAö?
The simple answer is that when his band step up the tempo and really
attack a song, it doesnÆt matter. In pop, if you can kick up a big
enough fug of energy and melody you can get away with the most
outrageous clichΘs. And so it is with roughly half of Music for the
People. When the Enemy ease off the plodding working-class consolation
songs and let their inarticulate rage take over, any reaction other
than submission feels like pedantry.