BBC Review
Coventry's latest young hopefuls deliver an album filled with sulky teens in dead-end...
Helen Groom 2007-07-13
Firstly, the good things about the album. The Enemy’s energy bursts through the speakers, and the sound is nice and tight, and the choruses are just begging to be shouted back at the band by a sweaty, overly enthusiastic crowd.
Recent single “Had Enough” is an album highlight, with “It’s Not OK” a close second. Both are on the right side of raucous and shouty and give the feel of a band full of frustrated energy and ambition. In fact, all of the songs on We’ll Live And Die In These Towns are short (the longest track is just over 4 minutes), sharp indie pop.
But the overall impression is that a lot of this album is filler from a fairly one-dimensional band. They do the job, but there’s little to keep your interest on this debut album. “Technodanceaphobic”, in trying to get a driving drum beat and riff going, just ends up sounding monotonous, and “Happy Birthday Jane” is almost too dreary to mention.
Lyrically it is hardly advanced either. Gems such as ‘Irony can be quite funny/You making other people money/My working day has just begun/It’s not exactly what I would call fun’ pepper the album. You get the feeling that the next cliché about being a wage slave is just round the corner.
The bottom line is that you have heard this before, and you have heard it done better by the likes of The Arctic Monkeys and Hard Fi. The only subject matter seems to be of everyday sulky teens stuck in tin pot towns and rubbish jobs, with chips the size of Gibraltar on their shoulders – fine for a few tracks, but a whole album?
If you are a teenage boy you will like this album. If you aren’t, you would do better off going elsewhere.
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This album is better than this review suggests.
Hard-fi are a poor example of a good band, like the enemy, who have dealt with such topics, try the Jam.As for the Arctic Monkeys, as good as they are (arguably the best band around), they have only brushed on working for a small wage and fighting.
Cliches are there for a reason, this album captures modern living for a working class youngster perfectly.
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Have already written my view on the reviw of Music For The People and I am stunned as to how We'll Live And Die In These Towns has such a bad one too. This album is a classic. A definate five star for any fan of The Enemy. what you don't seem to realise that the majority of people who read this will be fans of The Enemy anyway so this review will have no impact whatsoever on their personal opinions.
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