CD of the week

THE ENEMY We'll Live and Die in These Towns Warners

Bucking the system used to be a prerequisite of rock music, although today it's rare that anyone would jeopardise their future by doing anything so unrewarding. Yet there are slivers of light breaking through, notably in the UK, where a few rock bands are taking social stands in their songs.

The Enemy, from Coventry, have something of The Jam about them, from the three-piece format to the snotty sneer and sullen lyrical

bent of lead singer Tom Clarke. Taking as a template Paul Weller's wide-eyed antisocial, anti-authoritarian In the City, Mr Clean and That's Entertainment (to name but three), Clarke espouses notional two-fingered diatribes while his bandmates (bassist Andy Hopkins, drummer Liam Watts) make taut rhythmic stabs amid rousing choruses and catchy melodies.

Clarke is a reasonably smart lyricist (from This Song: "Half the kids that aren't pushing prams are now pushing pills to boys and girls half their age, and the pubs and the clubs are full of drunks that don't remember the day they were born"), but you know that with a daily grind in modern literature he'd progress even further.

We've heard this kind of thing before, but these are decent songs full of punch and fibre. Doffing the cap to Weller is paralleled with tugging the forelock to the likes of Maximo Park (Had Enough) and Arctic Monkeys (40 Days and 40 Nights), while it's reassuring to discover that in-between are songs that broadly blend influences with razor-sharp instinct. The Enemy? Not for long. www.theenemy.com

Download tracks: Away from Here, We'll Live and Die in These Towns, Technodanceaphobic