Release Date: May 16, 2006
Genre(s): Indie, Rock
Record label: Astralwerks
Music Critic Score
How the Music Critic Score works
Buy Enemies Like This from Amazon
After their last ignominious state of address, Stealing a Nation, Radio 4's biggest challenge was to ditch the politics and drop the sound they made famous on 2001's Dance to the Underground and have diluted ever since. But, despite taking inspiration from the beat poets, the New Yorkers still have too much to say and too few ways to say it. Though the title track is a sharp comment on the unreliability of friends, its brace of drums and nervy rhythm leaves no mark.
Fast forwarding two years after the lukewarm Stealing of a Nation won the hearts of very few, one would think history wouldn't repeat itself with the same mistakes when discussing Radio 4. Perhaps an expansion of musical palettes or a change in direction would bring about the evolution of a band that seemed so promising with 2002's Gotham!. And while there are glimpses of this progression on Enemies Like This, they're all too few and far between to merit this album as anything but stagnant.
is available now