In the six years they’ve been around, The Enemy have achieved more than most bands achieve in a lifetime.
The three piece guitar band from Coventry exploded onto the Indie music scene in 2006 with their debut album, We’ll Live and Die in These Towns, charting at number one in the British album charts.
Appearing around the same time as Bombay Bicycle Club, The Kooks and The Mystery Jets to name just a few, and as part of a surge in popularity in Indie guitar-based groups, perhaps this early success alone would not have been enough to make you sit up and take notice of just another addition to the hordes of skinny-jeans wearing boy bands.
But the 2008 follow-up, Music for the People, charted at a tasty number two and soon pushed The Enemy out in front of their peers. Whereas this kind of success so early on in a career might have overwhelmed other bands, The Enemy took a break for a year, before reforming after ditching their mainstream label and choosing a smaller one to record their third album.
Released in May of this year, Streets in the Sky was another top ten achievement, and Vision caught up with them a week before their extensive latest tour of the UK to showcase the new album.
“Basically it’s a month of partying, you might be feeling a bit hungover but then you come off stage absolutely buzzing and you just want to go out and do it all again. It’s mad. People say touring’s hard but it’s completely self-inflicted – if all you did was get on stage and do the set it’d be the easiest thing in the world.”
Fans will be particularly excited to hear this latest studio album played live, as it may be a little different to the previous two.
“Working with Joby Ford, from The Bronx, gave us our sound back. There was no messing around with cool sounds, just us, as a three piece guitar band.”
“We demo’d in London, played two songs for him. Then he had to go back to L.A. where he lives, so we packed our bags and went to stay there for two weeks. ”
Despite being on their way to some serious success, the band found their smaller record label much better suited to their hands-on method of working:
“Our label, Cooking Vinyl, put us in a room two doors down from the offices and just let us do our own thing. I mean, we’re the songwriters, and they respected that. There was no hassling, they just gave us our own space.”
Known for consistently retweeting new and unsigned bands up and down the country, The Enemy have experienced first-hand just how important it can be to be recognised and supported by bigger bands.
“Oasis is one of our favourite bands collectively, and so when their management rang up and asked if we’d support them, we were like 100% yes. When Liam first came up to us, it was like ‘Oh My God it’s Liam Gallagher’. But by the end of the tour it became a bit more normal.”
Of course, with all this behind them, The Enemy were never going to be slack with plans for the future.
“We’ve got a lot of travelling planned for the next few years. We’d love to do America, and Japan is definitely up there. And we’ve just released in Australia. It’s just about getting The Enemy out there, getting as many people to hear us as possible.”
“It’s our dream to headline a festival. T in the Park is great, it would be incredible to headline that. We went to Snowbombing in Austria this year and it was just crazy, we went snowboarding and skiing and stuff and then went back to do the show at night. The management were shitting themselves a bit as bassist Andy is a bit accident prone.”
The Enemy have so much infectious energy when they are talking about the future of the band, that it is hard not to feel excited about what the next 10 years will bring for them. It is no surprise when they say, with a touch of light-heartedness but with the underlying focus which has brought them so far so quickly, “we didn’t start a band to play in pubs, we started a band to be the best band in the world.”
“We’re at a good place at the moment, we’ve got two albums and one with a slightly different sound. Our attitude with each other is spot on. We’re back at square one with all our enthusiasm and passion for the job. It feels like we’re us again.”