THE LIBERTINES
The Libertines (Rough Trade)
AMID THE RECENT reams of newsprint devoted to the Libertines, one headline stood out. Reproduced in Mojo, the French magazine Rock & Folk declared: “DANGER, BRANLEURS: THE LIBERTINES”. While certain nuances may be lost in translation, “branleurs” is basically French for a word that rhymes with “bankers”.
OK, the Libertines are a brilliant, “dangerous” English rock’n’roll group in a tradition stretching back to the Clash and beyond. But what a pair of drama queens Pete Doherty and Carl Barât have become.
Like an EastEnders script, the Libertines story is driven by stark personal conflicts between these two protagonists which pass through periods of crisis and resolution without ever really getting anywhere.
Doherty and Barât started the group three years ago in a liaison that was more like a romance than a musical partnership. A pair of skinny, waif-like creatures who were soon sporting identical “Libertines” tattoos, they experienced their first significant punch-up in August 2002 during the recordings for the group’s debut album, Up the Bracket.
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As a result, Doherty missed a gig in Scarborough, establishing a template of temporary estrangements followed by emotional reconciliations. An apogee was reached when Doherty was imprisoned in September 2003 for burgling Barât’s flat.
Having completed the recording of the group’s self- titled second album, Barât and Doherty are in another stand-off. Barât has informed the increasingly erratic Doherty that he is not welcome to play with the group until he has curtailed his drugs consumption.
Doherty has tried rehab. The most recent attempt involved a trip to a Thai monastery which ended with Doherty loaded up to the eyeballs in the backstreets of Bangkok.
While all this is a gift to the newspapers, the Libertines are now in danger of drifting into that area of PR limbo inhabited by Courtney Love and, at various times, the Gallagher brothers. Seduced by their own wild-child myth, they find themselves playing out their careers as a narrative cliché rather than as a musical act.
On The Libertines, the myth is woven so closely into the fabric of the music that it is impossible to tell them apart. Written, sung and played in more or less equal measure by Doherty and Barât, with able support from their otherwise silent partners, the bass player John Hassall and drummer Gary Powell, the album gnaws away at the bone of the Barât/Doherty relationship.
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“I watched friendship slip away/ But it wasn’t supposed to be that way,” Doherty sings on The Man Who Would Be King. Even when the song is ostensibly addressed to a girl — as on the wistful Music When the Lights Go Out — it sounds as if the same subject has simply been subjected to a little poetic licence: “All the memories of the pubs/ And the clubs and the drugs and the tubs/ We shared together/ Will stay with me forever.”
Musically, the album has great moments. Produced, as before, by the former Clash guitarist Mick Jones, tracks such as Narcissist and The Ha Ha Wall romp along with a crude, vibrant neo-punk energy while maintaining a pleasing degree of melodic interest. Arbeit Macht Frei has something of the Pixies in its manic two-step beat and Doherty’s spluttering vocal, while the current single, Can’t Stand Me Now, taps into Morrissey’s world-weary, English romanticism.
At their best, as on guitar-driven rockers such as Tomblands and The Saga, the Libertines bring a heroic, barnstorming display of bravado to heartfelt songs. But for all its charm, the album lacks the gung-ho momentum of its predecessor. As a body of work it seems overly self-conscious, as if the music has been robbed of some of its universal appeal by the specific subject matter of the songs.
Take the closing track, What Became of the Likely Lads, with its deliberate quotes from the theme tune of the TV sitcom starring James Bolam and Rodney Bewes. It’s a jolly, if scatterbrained, attempt at self-analysis that labours under clumsy, faux-cockney catchphrases: “But blood runs thicker, oh/ We’re thick as thieves, you know”. Barât and Doherty may have acknowledged their fondness for Chas and Dave, but there are limits.
That won’t bother their fans, who will pore over this album’s minutiae as if it were the Holy Grail. Indeed, it has already been hailed as “the last great British rock’n’roll album”, while the Libertines’ manager Alan McGee (of Oasis fame) has described the group as “culturally the most significant thing in my life since punk”. Maybe. But faced with amateur soap opera dramatics on this scale, and with McGee involved, you can’t rule out a touch of the branleurs.