ACCURATE ENEMY
“People often say that they are their own worst enemies,” explains Pat Madigan, guitarist and principal songwriter for the appropriately named Accurate Enemy. “The name is in reference to that internal conflict, the answer to the question ‘Who can hurt you the most?’ And the answer, of course, is, ‘Yourself’.”
For the members of Accurate Enemy, the moniker proved startlingly fitting. Formed in 2003 on the outskirts of Boston, the band dissolved not long after its inception due to the departure of Madigan, causing, what seemed at the time, to be a far-too-early demise. “I decided I didn’t need the band,” he states plainly. “In the end, I hadn’t realized how wrong I was. For half a year, there was something that was missing from my life.”
With Madigan’s epiphany, and restored commitment, the band regrouped from its six-month hiatus. Reforming in December of 2004, Accurate Enemy’s accidental new lease on life was not taken for granted. With renewed vigor, the band perfected songs, which, prior to their hiatus, had been missing that intangible “something”. By May, with their material at long last complete, the quintet set up camp in a nearby studio to complete the long overdo first chapter of their story.
“Working on this material, at this time, we were all a lot more relaxed,” relates singer Breandan Carter. “We broke out of the shell we had been in, got comfortable, and accomplished a lot.” Recorded over the course of four months, the final product is the band’s debut “Electrical Newspapers”.
The 13-song album finds the band stepping outside of traditional genre barriers to create an eclectic and stirring record, albeit difficult to pigeonhole. For the members of Accurate Enemy, being difficult to pigeonhole is fine with them. “Growing up around Boston, there are a lot of bands,” Carter explains, “And to listen to them, it sounds just like a record skipping. It’s all the same. Everyone in our band has different musical tastes,” he continues, citing a wide range of artists and styles from Led Zeppelin to Coldplay, to Third Eye Blind to Radiohead, “so the challenge, for us, is how do we incorporate all of those without losing direction? How do we create something new, and add a little ‘spice’ to the music scene in Boston?”
The question is clearly rhetorical. While the members of Accurate Enemy may have struggled with those very questions early on, it’s clear by listening to “Electrical Newspapers” that they successfully navigated those waters some time ago.
As the material on “Newspapers” spans several years of writing by Enemy’s various members, it manages to present itself as a chronicle encompassing the time between the adolescence and adulthood of its creators. The songs have an honest feeling about them that simply cannot be manufactured or manipulated.
With the band’s debut now a testimony to the member’s commitment, the future is wide open for Accurate Enemy. Clearly poised to make their mark in both their hometown of Boston and far beyond, the only people who can stop the band at this point would be themselves, and given what the band has gone through to arrive at their current destination, that seems as unlikely as anything.
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