Front cover of ‘It’s Automatic’

by Ed Biggs

Those who confidently maintain that critics don’t make a blind bit of difference to an artist’s fortunes might want to consider the fate of The Enemy. Having found a modicum of success with their revivalist debut We’ll Live And Die In These Towns in 2007, their second album Music For The People was released two years later to some breathtakingly savage reviews (particularly the memorable pay-off line in the BBC’s review, “what did the people ever do to deserve this?”). However, lead singer and writer Tom Clarke had allowed his group to be marketed as ‘the voice of the credit crunch’ and their incessant attempts to relate, to speak on behalf of the working class, were so appallingly cack-handed that they deserved every bit of that shellacking. Being dropped by Warners didn’t provide them with the wake-up call they needed, and 2012’s Streets In The Sky, almost inconceivably, managed to be even worse. In five short years, The Enemy went from platinum-selling success to a laughing stock, a punchline to their own bad joke. Don’t tell us that the critics didn’t at least have some part to play in that.

The abuse Clarke received via social media regarding his diminutive stature was, however, needlessly cruel and irrelevant, since when he’s quit Twitter and repositioned himself as a “happy outcast”. Their fourth album It’s Automatic has been made with the help of Pledgemusic, suggesting that The Enemy might genuinely have started again from square one rather than try to resuscitate their flagging formula. So it’s with a great sense of apprehension that one glances at the tracklisting and notes the spelling of the opening track ‘Don’t Let Nothing Get In The Way’ (sigh…), sensing that The Enemy are still stuck in the post-Oasis lad rock paradigm that even Kasabian have at least tried to move on from. A piece of stodgy, indigestible stadium rock replete with booming drums and overwrought histrionics, the chorus is simply the title repeated four times with other ‘stick-it-to-the-man’ style lyrics about “men with briefcases” who “got no morals / they got no code”. A number of similarly drab, uninspiring dirges populate It’s Automatic, the lumbering title track, ‘Magic’ and ‘Our Time’ being the worst offenders, but let’s try to concentrate on the positives that are here.

If you’ve got the patience, or even the sheer bloody-mindedness and gluttony for punishment, to trawl through such lumpen and unimaginative Jam-lite pub rock, then you’ll find a couple of moments that demonstrate The Enemy’s willingness to at least expand their palette. They’ve said that their new producer Gethin Pearson forced them to listen to their former nemeses The Horrors during the making of It’s Automatic, and that influence is detectable in the semi-funk of ‘Some Things’, or the weird ‘Superhero’ in which Clarke’s voice becomes distractingly transatlantic. The dream-pop feel of closer ‘What’s A Boy To Do’, set to a slow, churning beat, is by far the best moment and at least finishes things well. When Clarke drops his insufferable attempts to make his lyrics relatable and actually explores inside his own head, the results can often pass for decent. The one place this approach backfires is the hilariously bad ‘Melody’, with a grandiose synth opening totally undercut by his honking vocals, but at least it’s different, a pejorative word never before used to describe The Enemy.

People have always said that it’s easy to dismiss The Enemy as chavvy knuckle draggers (and it is), but they really can’t blame anybody except themselves if they insist on producing such appalling drivel that makes up three-quarters of It’s Automatic. However, there are at least signs of life in their bodies, and as a songwriter Clarke is now wise enough not to keep dogmatically stuck to the same dead formula. In any case, one suspects that it’s too late for The Enemy to rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of critics, given that there’s still so little by way of innovation and creativity present in their new effort, so they really had very little to lose, both artistically and commercially. It’s a notable improvement, but, to be honest, they couldn’t have gotten any worse. (3/10)

Listen to It’s Automatic here!