Playing the hits
The Enemy are the latest one album wonders to make it to a position of prominence on the Main Stage. As you might imagine there’s a large turn out, although even at this early evening point I wondered just what percentage were camped out for Rage Against the Machine.
The Enemy wasted no time in hitting the ground running with hit single ‘Away From Here’, but there after we were treated with a succession of album tracks, which for a fan of the band will have been fine but highlighted that there’s filler to be found on ‘We’ll Live and Die in These Towns’.
The title track of the record did get a good deal of those in the crowd singing and grabbed the attention of any wandering mind which may have been studying the stage schedules to see who else could be seen.
The highlight in terms of crowd reaction came with the more laid back ‘This Song’, which does sound more like fellow West Midlanders The Twang and provided some much needed variety in the sound of material.
The set closed with the excellent, bouncy ‘You’re Not Alone’ showing that when good this band are very good. Although it was a solid, energetic performance, this set in parts had the feel of victims of their own success however and maybe they’d have made a better impression on more had they played the Radio 1 Stage. This could have had a lasting memory similar to Pendulum or MGMT, when in fact they’re legacy from the weekend is just another band. It’s a problem that isn’t going away soon though, where you have better bands like the Automatic and those with bigger back catalogues, Biffy Clyro, playing lower down the pecking order from the current flavour of the month.