We'll Live and Die in These Towns

As debut albums go, it's unnerving that The Enemy are already this good and yet barely old enough to buy their own champagne when the ridiculously high chart placings inevitably come in.

So here's what's brilliant about this band: the 11 songs here offer no solution, no way out and very little hope, making We'll Live and Die in These Towns as bleak in its own way as the Manic Street Preachers' The Holy Bible. The songs are brilliant, too.

It would appear that working-class Coventry trio The Enemy are now officially the next big thing.

Right at the end, they redeem themselves with a romantic little pop ditty that strays into Colourfield territory, with Clarke's scowling, angry young man tones wrapping themselves as well as they can around gentler, less confrontational sentiments. It's the most interesting thing on the album and if they can harness this flexibility a bit more in the future, they might just find themselves lasting the course.

Fact is, the Enemy are better than that, and their debut full-length is also certainly better than some kind of classic Britpop rehash.

That’s not to say that the Enemy are on anywhere near the scale of awfulness which the Ordinary Boys descended to, but the flaws in We Live and Die in These Towns mar an album which does have some silver linings.

The point being that this album isn’t “terrible,” just sort of dull and boring.

That it still ends up being reasonably affecting is testament to the band’s essential likeability, but it’s not enough to escape the feeling that We’ll Live And Die... is a record that’s worryingly lacking in presence or character.

High on aggro but low on ideas, it mimics The Pistols' sneer and The Jam's melodies, while throwing in some inexcusably clichéd lyrics.