Now that Oasis have left us, someone has to take the mantle of Britain's favourite parka-inspired lad rock. Only those who have an unhealthy obsession with a distortion pedal, write anthemic sing-a-longs designed for people holding plastic pint glasses and sneer vigorously through a microphone need apply. Beady Eye do not count, for the record.
Enter The Enemy.
For quite a few years now, this Coventry three-piece have rarely broken new ground or pushed any serious boundaries, and this new single from their recently successful 'Streets in the Sky' album is pretty much more of the same formula. It opens with a slow-build verse about waking up in his clothes, and gradually adds more and more layers of guitar until it blasts out in the aforementioned anthemic sing-a-long chorus without ever looking back. Technically, the song is a bit of a mess with chords and notes being flung around and wildly distorted all over the place, but this isn’t a song about being prim and neat anyway, so that really doesn’t matter a jot.
'This is Real', when it gets going, bursts with an energy that the UK rock scene is distinctly lacking right now, and it’s almost refreshing to hear someone picking up the mantle the mid-2000s have left behind and thrashing their guitars around, shouting into microphones and generally just writing crunchy songs just for the heck of it. “Hold your head up, it’ll be ok”, frontman Tom Clarke starts to yell towards the end, and you start to get the impression that it really will.
Where this song truly does translate is its live setting, having seen it performed in concert. It truly does fill up the space and gets a crowd going. I’m by no means an Enemy fan, but it got me going too. There’s a real atmosphere about it that just grabs people and gets them right into it, despite it not being a known single at the time. Very few “new” songs can actually do that before people at least learn the words.
What the Enemy do isn't new but it is consistent and they’re good at it. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine Liam and co writing an upbeat track much different from this back during their Oasis-led heydays, which is more of a compliment than it sounds. Long may they continue.
The Enemy released 'This Is Real' on 22nd October through Cooking Vinyl.
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Enter The Enemy.
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