We'll Live And Die In These Towns, by The Enemy (LP on Warners)

This three piece from Coventry have already been rightly praised for this debut album. It’s tight, direct and best of all shows a band that do have a brain, and something to say. With an average age of 19, the Enemy have, not surprisingly been compared to the 1977 model of the Jam, even down to echoing lyrics; in "You’re Not Alone" the Enemy sing ‘Don’t let the sun go down/on our empire’, whilst on "Time For Truth" the Jam sung ‘Whatever happened to the great empire?’ A comment about also echoing a possible political naivety should follow here, but I can’t be arsed… Instead let’s look at the other songs. Their sociopolitical material is inspired by their hometown, and speaks of unemployment ("You’re Not Alone"), despair and poverty in the title track, and teenage misery of underage pregnancies and drugs ("This Song") but there is also a longing to escape the mundanity of everyday life, ("Away From Here" and "It’s Not OK").

Unlike Weller and co., the Enemy’s sound does not feature those wonderful slashing, razor-sharp chords that made the early Jam so essential. Overall the production plays it safe, with strings sometimes threatening to overpower the band, and thus some of their anger and passion is lost.

"We’ll Live And Die in These Towns" is not a masterpiece, but it is a fine and satisfying first outing, and bodes well for the future.