There’s nothing wrong with having a message. Gang Of Four, Killing Joke, the Clash, all prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that music can and will knock hard at the walls of convention and provide momentum for change. But then you have bands like The Alarm and U2 and the whole thing begins to sound fairly unconvincing; not because there’s anything wrong with the message, but because the rallying call that propelled them from obscurity and inconsequence in the first place is drowned out by a pitiful lack of insight. It’s one thing to reject your political options, it’s quite another to offer alternatives and when your cutting your contemporary political edge to the fabric of another era the whole thing starts to unravel. And whilst musically reliable (in razor-sharp, angular, Gang Of Four fashion) it’s still the less than inspired political rallying that gets all the attention, as first single ‘Enemies Like This’ attests. That said, Anthony Roman’s agitated take on Strummer’s bone-rattling punkery on ‘Too Much To Ask For’ is successful precisely where ‘Stealing a Nation’ wasn’t, in that it turns up the guitars, cranks up the beats and starts writhing around on the dancefloor.
A tidy and competent release from the New Yorkers, even if the homage is taking over the house.