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Your Enemies Friends

You Are Being Videotaped (2004)
Buddyhead Records

Reviewer Rating:

Contributed by: Scott
(others by this writer | submit your own)

Published on March 12th 2004

Reviewing anything that Buddyhead releases is inherently dangerous. The website people love to hate talks so much shit on other bands that one must think that if they believe enough in a band to actually shell out the money to release a record of theirs, the band has to be all sorts of good. It's a lot of pressure on a group, but Your Enemies Friends shrugs off the Buddyhead stigma and delivers an incredibly solid debut LP.

Your Enemies Friends will probably get compared by many a lazy rock journalist to Pretty Girls Make Graves, due to the complex song structures, liberal use of keyboards, and a strong female vocalist. The group's sound only bares a passing resemblance to Pretty Girls Make Graves, if that. Your Enemies Friends instead concocts a mixture of dissonant post-rock, snotty new-wave, and wall-of-sound guitar rock reminiscent of contemporaries Vaux.

You Are Being Videotaped's best asset is it's overall recording sound. If this band is half as intense and venomous as producer Cameron Webb made them sound, listeners will be in for a treat come live show time. There's a lot of power in tracks like "The One Condition" and almost-too-poppy "Back Of A Taxi." Main vocalist Ronnie Washburn's voice contains a healthy amount of swagger and sass but - amazingly enough - can hold a decent tune at the same time! A definite rarity in today's oversaturated market of overhyped, undertalented style-before-substance groups.

The only gripe I can scrounge up about Your Enemies Friends is that they never seem to know when to quit. Many of the songs on the disc get rather repetitive, playing the chorus over and over until it's hammered into your head. It pushes the borders of obnoxiousness occasionally, but the band always seems to know right when to stop pushing the listener's buttons and move onto the next song - it's almost like they planned it.

For a group this young, You Are Being Videotaped contains a lot of elements that work well together, and also leave the door wide open for more experimentation [see the quiet dirge of album closer "Easy Assault" or the electronic/dub mesh of "Census" for proof]. With this disc, Your Enemies Friends should be able to step out from under the Buddyhead shadow and be recognized for the talented musicians they are.

MP3
Back Of A Taxi

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yellowtrash (September 13, 2004)

I still think this album is boring and the songs mesh too much into each other.

Anonymous (June 28, 2004)

Actually, to the fucker who said this is gramatically incorrect, it is "your enemies' friends" they just leave off the apostrophe. but it is correct

Anonymous (May 28, 2004)

i definitely enjoy this.and it's even better live.

Anonymous (April 29, 2004)

The vocals, jeebus, they're so fucking crap, ruins the rest of the CD, which is actually pretty decent. "Please make me feel like I'm aliiiiiiiive", or whatever he says, jesus, could it BE more stereotypical emo-nonsense? I can't believe Buddyhead cared to release this.

elvisdechico (April 8, 2004)

i'm not done listening yet, but so far, this record is pretty tits...

Anonymous (March 18, 2004)

i think this record is great. i agree that some of the songs get a little grating or something at times, but overall i think it's a great next step. the vocals for the most part are excellent and i keep finding new things to like about it everytime i listen.

i think the artork is amazing.

also, i don't really understand the comment about the pgmg comparison. i mean, there's basically only one song on this record with female vocals and prior to the new romance, pgmg never really used keyboards. funny because keyboards were added after they toured endlessly with your enemies friends.

buddyhead or not, i like it.

Anonymous (March 16, 2004)

Live they were ok. Good musically, but the keyboardist was just about a mannequin as far as I could tell, and the singer was trying WAY too hard.

As a resident of the district of columbia, if I have to listen to one more out of town band talk about either (a) Dischord records or (b) George Bush and his Republican gov't (this shit didn't happen during Clinton even though it's two sides to the same coin)... I'm gonna throttle someone.

These guys (or hopefully just the one guy was being a jackass) chose route B.

Anonymous (March 16, 2004)

the album cover is cool, i don't know what you guys are talking about.

Anonymous (March 16, 2004)

still a solid debut. the first half is attacking and the second more spatial. good times, great oldies.

Anonymous (March 14, 2004)

that person is right... this bands name doesn't make grammatical sense....t-shirt recall!

i-type-poorly (March 14, 2004)

boring album cover

Anonymous (March 14, 2004)

"Their name isn't even grammatically correct. I'll take my time to listen when they take the time to learn the laws of the language."

sounds like someones on the rag

squirrelbait (March 14, 2004)

"15 hipsters who are from Idaho but live in Hollywood are stoked."

Wow, you're sooo original. You're the first one ever to post a comment like this about a Buddyhead related post. Go listen to your newest Drive Thru purchase.

Anonymous (March 14, 2004)

good, but not great.

TheOneTrueBill (March 13, 2004)

I liked them despite my hardest efforts not to. I like this song as well.

Jesse (March 13, 2004)

Actually, you don't have to double space after sentances. The only reason that this was practiced was for typewriters, every letter took up the same amount of space. With fonts like this, single space is actually the correct way. Looks like you lose. And you're telling who to learn how to type?

Tommy (March 13, 2004)

Great live band.

Camera friendly too!

www.humid.ca/dep/yef01.jpg

www.humid.ca/dep/yef02.jpg

Anonymous (March 13, 2004)

"You didn't put bother to double space between your sentences, so I'll take my time to tell you to shut the fuck up and to learn the "laws of language"

suck a dick

Haha... "put bother"? Let's pick a word and stick with it.

Anonymous (March 13, 2004)

Wow... double spaces? Didn't know we were going seventh grade on it there, teach.

Anonymous (March 13, 2004)

You didn't put bother to double space between your sentences, so I'll take my time to tell you to shut the fuck up and to learn the "laws of language"

suck a dick

Anonymous (March 13, 2004)

Their name isn't even grammatically correct. I'll take my time to listen when they take the time to learn the laws of the language.

notaclevername (March 12, 2004)

i liked them live and i like this mp3--SORT OF like an actually good version of Celebrity,...SORT OF