The Enemy - We'll Live and Die in These Towns

The Enemy pride themselves on their working class roots, and have an unalterable belief that this makes for better music. However:

a) The idea of the glorious working class is a curiously British one. And British music is on its arse. With the best in the world being pretentious-but-lovable types from North America or Scandinavia, perhaps its time to try a different trick?

b) Half of Yorkshire is already on this class warfare bandwagon anyway, unified by their liberal references to Gregg’s or Smirnoff Ice or whatever proletarian buzzword is en vogue this week.

c) The band’s experience of true blue-collar toil is obviously as limited as their vocalist’s range, when you consider he’s only 18.

d) This is shite.

Before he got a little bit crap, Paul Weller was the Modfather, and the Jam were one of the biggest bands in Britain. Tracks like That’s Entertainment and A Town Called Malice perfectly chronicled small-town life, and were destined to become fixtures at every indie night, at every Old Skool night, and on every pub jukebox for the whole of eternity. I probably don’t need to tell you all of that, but the Enemy claim to not know who Paul Weller is.

What’s even more astounding is that despite this, they sound exactly like a very, very bad version of the Jam.

The album opens with Aggro, a typically ladrock-by-numbers tune about scraps and pubs, with not even the wit of an I Predict a Riot. It is, at least, loud, giving them the edge missing from their fellow Midlands dullards, the Twang, whilst sadly mimicking the pomp of yet more Midlands dullards, Kasabian.

Next up is the painfully catchy Away From Me, a bloody awful seen-it-all-before rant about crap towns, daytime TV and other similar social-commentary-in-crayon. “Don’t be a slave to the modern wage” is a line and a mantra so jaded you’re not entirely sure where it’s stolen from. The Jam? The Manics? Placebo?

Had Enough is only track four, but a more apt title you’d struggle to find.

Then, the title track, its horn intro sending a shudder down your spine as you struggle to contemplate the Enemy going ‘epic.’ Here, the Weller-vocals are at their most blatant, spitting a mess of clichéd sloganeering and a spirit-crushingly repetitive chorus.

You’re Not Alone raises the bar slightly, its marching rhythm section hinting there could be at least some, very raw, talent involved, and Technodanceaphobia will create far more foot-tapping than most, erm, technodance.

This Song drags things back down. It’s another idea above their station, starting like Doves’ Black and White Town, and lurching into A New England by Billy Bragg, but achieving little, and the album closes with the mawkish Happy Birthday Jane.

The biggest problem with We’ll Live and Die in These Towns and their ilk, is that if you’re sick of the mundane, the repetitive and the tedious, why would you want to add to it with an album as generic and monotonous as this?