In recent months, The Libertines have captured the collective imagination of the UK’s legion of tabloid journalists something rotten, with editors ominously branding Pete Doherty, with his alleged £1000-a-week smack habit, the next Sid Vicious. Hell, even Dot Cotton has been offering him advice on getting clean. It all seems a little surreal, an unjust situation perhaps, for a band whose music can clearly do all the talking.
Having made friends and influenced people with their debut album ‘Up The Bracket’, and courted all manner of hype with the hugely infectious single ‘Don’t Look Back Into The Sun’, The Libertines have decided that if it ain’t broken, there’s no need to fix it. With The Libertines, they dish up more of the same, imbuing louche, exuberant garage-punk with an unhinged romantic acumen. Sure, there’s plenty of scissor-kicking activity on tracks like ‘Last Post On The Bugle’ and ‘The Man Who Would Be King’, but the real surprise on the album is the affecting and poignant ‘Music When The Lights Go Out’. In all, The Libertines, with its lack of delusions of grandeur, rouses the semi-sleeping spirits of fellow Cockernees The Clash and The Jam and, on occasion, Blur.
The production on the album is wholly shambolic, and there are two distinct possiblities why. Perhaps the band are attempting to stay true to their scruffy toilet circuit roots; or maybe this album has been, in a moment of mercenary abandon, rushed out to capitalise on the infamy surrounding Doherty. Either, way, the future of the line-up as we know it may be hanging in doubt right now, but let’s hope that the sheer power of the album can diffuse attention from the band’s personal problems.