Run The Enemy Archives

Spotlight Feature: Run The Enemy filtered indie post-punk poetry through a pensive Americana lens with their sophomore single, Barbara Gray

Posted on 28 June 2024

For their second single, the cerebrally poetic Indie/Americana ensemble, Run the Enemy, unearthed the sublime from the serendipitous, immortalising the fleeting yet eternal encounter between Elvis and Barbara Gray in 1956.

Infused with samples of fervent Elvis fans within an Editors-esque post-punk framework, the Cambridge, UK-based band magnifies the tenderness of transient intimacy in a pop culture moment of pure connection, inviting listeners to inhabit that ephemeral instant and luxuriate in its synchronicity.

With vocals reminiscent of Elbow, choked with emotion and deftly illuminating the lyrical depths, and an atmosphere of sepia-toned nostalgia enveloping the hauntingly angular guitars, iridescent keys, and throbbing rhythm section, Barbara Gray lodges itself in the soul, simultaneously imparting the transcendent nature of a moment never to be lost to history.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a better entry into the UK indie scene in 2024. It’s only a matter of time before Run the Enemy tears its way into the mainstream.

Run the Enemy Said:

“The song is about randomly overlapping lives, inspired by the fleeting moments shared by Elvis and Barbara Gray, captured on film by Alfred Wertheimer in 1956 at the Jefferson Hotel in Virginia.

For over fifty years, the girl remained anonymous until she appeared on the Today Show to discuss the one day that her life crossed with Elvis’s, like a crossword clue; he was seven down, she was eight across. Despite the moment being so transient and their lives going in such different directions thereafter, their moment is preserved forever on film.”

Barbara Gray was officially released on June 28^th; stream the single on Spotify.

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Review by Amelia Vandergast

Run The Enemy brought even more tragedy to the legacy of Sylvia Plath with their Post-Punk vignette, She Writes Poetry

Posted on 18 March 2024

Poetry may be becoming a dying art form, but it lives and breathes through the hauntingly melodic introspection in the standout single, She Writes Poetry, from Run the Enemy’s hotly anticipated debut album, Trail of Tears.

After the post-punk-tinged and angularly cavernous lead guitar work in the prelude, the timbre of the melancholic indie vocal lines spectrally appears in the achingly pensive release which finds the monochrome middle ground between Editors earlier work and Interpol’s most affecting expositions of ennui.

With the final crescendo, She Writes Poetry, which gives Richey Edwards and Morrissey a run for their lyrical vignette money, builds into a massive all-encompassing production with strings carving through the post-punk atmosphere.

Written to allude to the abusive relationship between Plath and Ted Hughes, the Cambridge-based outfit succeeded in bringing even more tragedy to the legacy of Plath, given that she stuck her head in an oven in her final moments and penned some of the most pensively affecting works to date, that is some feat of ingenuity.

Stream She Writes Poetry as part of Run The Enemy’s debut LP, Trail of Tears, on Spotify now.

Review by Amelia Vandergast