Streets In the Sky

The Coventry, England, band The Enemy UK is a Britpop revivalist trio whose third studio album, Streets in the Sky, sounds like its members grew up in the same flat with a stash of '90s British music magazines like Melody Maker, The Lime Lizard, and NME. The opening “Gimme the Sign” takes its steroidal guitar-pop cues equally from These Animal Men and Shed Seven. “Bigger Cages (Longer Chains)” taps into the working-class anthems that peppered the group's preceding album, 2009’s Music for the People. This one reels with the winding guitar leads of singer Tom Clarke, whose frantic six-string style reveals that he may very well own every release in Northern Uproar’s discography. Although Clarke’s nasal sneer owes much to a young Liam Gallagher, he sings with a punchy phrasing in the standout single “Saturday”; at times he brings some of Paul Weller’s Jam-era angst. But Clarke has an original knack for penning power pop melodies that are equally infectious and unpredictable, as heard in “Like a Dancer.”