Tom Warke reviews his Album of the Week – The Enemy’s Streets in the Sky…
Coventry indie rock band The Enemy, were formed in 2006. The members of the band include Tom Clarke, Liam Watts, Andy Hopkins and Chris Allen.
Their first acclaim was by NME who describe them as an act ‘most likely to break your windows’. Throughout their first year they supported many acts such as Oasis, Kasabian, Manic Street Preachers and Stereophonics, which heightened their reputation.
In 2007 The Enemy released their debut album, ‘We’ll Live and Die In these Towns’. The first single they released from the album was ‘Away From Here’, which entered the charts at number eight and its follow up ‘Had Enough’ reached number four in the charts. The album was a huge success as it went straight to number one. They also received accolades for Best New Act at the Q Awards and also received an award for the Best British Debut Album by XFM Awards.
They started 2008 with being awarded Best New Band by NME. And in March they began to work on their second album. During 2009, The Enemy alongside Kasabian and Twisted Wheel supported Oasis for their Dig Out Your Soul Tour. The band also embarked on their own tour of Britain and Ireland, playing to 70,000 people with Twisted Wheel and Kid British as support acts.
In 2009 they released their second album ‘Music for the People’. The main singles from the album were ‘Be Somebody’, which you might recognise from ITV’s FA Cup coverage and ‘No Time for Tears’ which reached 16th in the UK Charts. The Enemy weren’t able to match their first album success with ‘Music for the People’, however it did go straight to number two.
The band took a two year break before returning in 2011 to start work on their third studio album. In February 2012 lead singer Tom Clarke released the name of the album, ‘Streets in the Sky’.
He also announced that there would be a free single to download called ‘Gimme the Sign’, which is still available to download now. Well worth downloading as it is a great track and very reminiscent of their original work from ‘We’ll Live and Die In These Towns’.
Other great tracks from this album is ‘Saturday’, a real anthem track which makes any listener look forward to the weekend. Heavy guitar rhythms is detrimental to The Enemy’s style of music and a song from this album which epitomises this is ‘1-2-3-4’, another great track with a belting chorus. There are so many tracks from this album that could be released as singles, one of these is ‘Get Up and Dance’. The track builds up beautifully with one instrument introduced one after another to a powerful chorus.
My favourite track from the album however is ‘This is Real’, a song which has great meaning and can relates to some peoples lives, “Love we don’t have much, but what we have is enough, just hold your head up and we’ll be ok”. Their decision to return to their originality of their first album has been a great one, but this no way a step back for The Enemy, its merely a sign of direction they want to take for the future.
‘Streets in the Sky’ is available to buy on iTunes for £5.99, with individual tracks available for 99p.