The Enemy on their 2016 farewell UK tour (Alberto Pezzali for Live4ever)
The spotlight is on ‘We’ll Live And Die In These Towns’ as The Enemy make their return.
Although now unfairly maligned as ‘landfill indie’ – which inevitably led to them being lumped alongside the likes of The Fratellis and The Pigeon Detectives – Coventry’s The Enemy actually started life as social commentators in the vein of The Jam, Blur or The Clash.
Furthermore, their debut album – 2007’s We’ll Live And Die In These Towns – had quite the impact 15 years ago; UK Number 1 with a Thriller-esque seven singles were lifted from it, as well as impressive support slots and shows of their own.
Unfortunately, that debut proved to be a one-off, with no subsequent release coming anywhere near the quality or impact. Indeed, time has not been kind to The Enemy, and nowadays the trio (expanded to a quartet onstage) are regarded as little more than a ‘lad’s band’ which, based on the demographic of the crowd for this sold-out show, isn’t entirely unfair.
Yet this tour (billed as a reunion but based around playing the first album in full) offers the opportunity for reappraisal (as these things often do) even if we are now at the stage of reunion gigs for bands you didn’t know had broken up in the first place.
In contrast, their appearance hasn’t changed; bassist Andy Hopkins still looks like he’s in the wrong group, with boyband looks and hair still immaculately in place as he takes to the centre of the stage to gee the crowd up, while singer Tom Clarke is still diminutive (obviously) but provides a thunderous sound on both vocals and guitar while drummer Liam Watts matches the volume behind his kit.
As is so often the way of songs of the street, much of the lyrical content remains relevant, consisting of tales of small-town aspirations, observations or romance.
A crowd who have been warmed up via Oasis, Kasabian and James (as well as, heaven save us, Sweet Caroline) before their entrance need little motivation to go wild but get it anyway via the fittingly-named Aggro (‘Call the police, things are getting ugly’), all wind-tunnel guitar, pounding drums and soaring vocals.
The high velocity anthemia of Away From Here is followed by the stop-start hurricane of Pressure and Hard Enough, the sort of track that is tailor-made for participation from an audience as lubricated as this.
After a blistering opening quartet of songs, the horns which introduce the title-track from We’ll Live And Die In These Towns are greeted rapturously, with the stomping percussion and yearning melancholia reminding us that there was more to The Enemy than solid guitar rock, a surprising maturity of observation from ones so young.
Lyrics like, ‘Dirty dishes from a TV meal that went cold from the wind through a smashed-up window’, run the risk of parody, but sung from the heart in this fashion makes them universal. Meanwhile, You’re Not Alone – a song written about the closing of the Peugeot factory in the trio’s native Coventry – has an epic quality that simply can’t be denied.
To hammer the ‘youth without hope’ message, 40 Days And 40 Nights rams it home with a segway into The Special’s classic Ghost Town, but the mood is too celebratory to be righteous, a fact not helped by Clarke enquiring if the crowd are going to ‘have it’ or variations thereof.
The highlight of the set is This Song, a well-crafted indie pop song if ever there was one, but sadly its impact is lessened by a reprise at the end of the encore, a fact which perhaps underlines the central issue.
Indeed, their encore is a medley of songs from subsequent, unfairly derided albums (Be Somebody, Gimme The Sign, Saturday and No Time For Tears), as if the band themselves are aware of their limitations.
For a brief period, The Enemy undeniably spoke to sections of their generation with massively ambitious songs, sitting in the gutter but shouting to the stars. They burned brightly and, as the crowd would insist upon, deserve this nostalgic hurrah.
Music for the people.