Waste/Gracelands

The great tragedy of Pete Doherty is not the proliferation of shlocky horror tabloid headlines, busts, burglaries, booze ups and drug relapses – his life, his choice – but that all of the above have obscured fair consideration of his talent as a songwriter. Even his glugging buddy Shane MacGowan managed to paint a dozen odd masterpieces before becoming everyone’s favourite public train wreck.
Mr Doherty is a romantic with a capital R: not just in the old Byron, Shelley, Keats and De Quincey sense, but in his love affair with the myth and history of old London, the punky Dickensian pageantry that made Babyshambles’ Down In Albion a far finer record than anybody seemed prepared to admit. And even if he doesn’t have a lick of horse sense, the lad is booksmart and pop literate: Doherty’s songs pitch up somewhere between Peter Ackroyd’s and Iain Sinclair’s secret Whitechapel histories and the Only Ones’ sinewy post-punk symphonies, a lineage that runs from London Calling right up to The Good, The Bad & The Queen.
So before hearing a note of Grace/Wastelands, one might well have tagged Doherty as a Blakean cockney-eyed wide boy subject to visions of angels perched on chimneytops. And yes, it transpires that the opening ‘Arcady’ is a skipalong skiffle that leans heavily on Songs Of Innocence And Experience’s pure and simple refrains. The effect is as charming as hell. Same goes for ‘1939 Returning’, an accomplished WWII vignette boasting impressive historical imagination and period detail (“Kids knee deep in rubble/London urchins grey with dust”).
But if the album is laced with old Albion imagery and English country gardenia (‘I Am The Rain’), the music is catholic enough to include a full-blooded dub stitched with acoustic guitar and Pablo-vian melodica (‘Last Of The English Roses’) whose most obvious antecedent is ghettoblaster Clash, or even Big Audio Dynamite. Such fat-bottomed sounds suit Doherty, anchoring his fey delivery and meandering melodies with rhythmical muscle.
So, believe it or not, Grace/Wastelands is a subtle, simple, but richly layered album, impressive in range, trying on styles like hats, but steering clear of pastiche. ‘A Little Death Around The Eyes’ and ‘Salome’ are slinky Francophile ballads with Jarvis/Scott/Serge arrangements, guitars clipped on the snare beat, boulevardier accordian and sweeping strings.
‘Palace Of Bone’ is a sober strumalong halfway between Nikki Sudden and any high street busker doing Dylan, and there’s a dash of Syd-like psychic disorientation in ‘New Love Grows On Trees’. ‘Sweet By And By’, meanwhile, is The Faces gathered around the old johanna for a larf with muted trumpet and slide trombone (and I’ll eat my po’boy hat if Ronnie Wood ain’t buried in here somewhere).
No doubt about it: Peter Doherty is a substantial songwriting talent. Get your fill of it before his vices of choice eat his heart out.

Key Track: 'Broken Love Song'