The Enemy – You’re Not Alone

No, The Enemy are not doing a Klaxons and re-imagining a nineties ‘classic,’ they’ve actually written this themselves. Perhaps they should get a double Mercury prize for writing their own material, miaow? Bitchiness aside, it’s a feisty little number.

Andy lays down a plucky bass line, Liam bounds out a rhythm with all the solidity of an elongated sound-check and Tom’s subterranean guitars effectively clone the intro from Talking Head’s ‘Psycho Killer,’ but gives it a deeper voice. When Tom starts to sing about empires it is with the voice of Andy Partridge spliced with Midge Ure, curious new wave bedfellows but indicative of a pop sophistication belying the melody’s straightforward simplicity.

Add a chorus that just repeats the title over and over and the whole thing becomes as annoyingly appealing as The Proclaimers. Yes indeed, this is a pop labradoodle, a mongrel with pedigree but still liable to spoil your priceless Persian. It also brings to mind one of my favourite Leeds bands, The Scaramanga Six, which is no bad thing. Stompy, crude and effective, a song that reminds you that, for all its lack of sophistication, a hammer is still a useful tool.