If one were to be particularly cutting, any bill containing a combination of Twisted Wheel and The Enemy could be summarized as a battle of the Jam tribute acts. In the blue corner stood feisty Oldham newcomers Twisted Wheel, arriving on stage with a clear sense of purpose and striding into previous single ‘She’s a Weapon’ they set out their stall for the rest of their eight song set pretty quickly. Bog standard lad-rock. The kind of lad-rock that holds the swagger of Liam Gallagher, the lyrics of Noel and the talent of neither. Announcing the title of their latest release to be ‘You Are Us’, one could confidently expect a two and a half minute ‘anthem’ of the lowest common denominator justified on the basis of being designed for the working class. Unfortunately for Twisted Wheel though, not one member of the crowd proceeded to ‘have it large’ and they continued to play out the rest of their stage time in front of a muted audience.
Such a lack lustre performance left the door well and truly open for The Enemy to bring the noise and put the young pretenders in their place. Needing no invitation to do exactly this, the lights went down, Tom Clarke and co arrived onstage and proceeded to tear the Birmingham Academy a new one. Playing things safe and dedicating the majority of their set to old favourites from debut ‘We’ll Live And Die In These Town’ almost every song was greeted with a rabble rousing cheer and the Coventry trio’s clumsy epithets to escapism were accordingly sung back to them in euphoric unison.
This process was so eminently communal that as every track passed by, the chosen title for the band’s sophomore LP ‘Music For The People’, became less and less of an outlandish gesture of cocksure arrogance and more and more a statement of fact. Whilst the likes of ‘Away From Here’ and ‘It’s Not OK’ are never going to be listed in a critic’s top 100 list, they undeniably meant something to this small stratification of the Midlands. New songs ‘No Time For Tears’ and ‘Sing When You’re In Love’ seemed to be built of similar mettle yet were met with less enthusiasm, a problem I expect to be solved come 27th April. Closing on ‘You’re Not Alone’ with sweat of dripping from the speaker stacks, such an assured performance of stadium sized confidence proved The Enemy to be a cut far above the rest of their lad-rock contemporaries. They certainly haven’t done enough yet to cast away that often cumbersome tag but on tonight’s evidence they seemed proud to wear it as a badge of honour.
‘Music For The People’, the second album from The Enemy is released on 27th April 2009
‘Twisted Wheel’, the debut from Twisted Wheel is released on 9th April 2009
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