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Their songs have become anthems: "What a Waster", "I Get Along", "Up the Bracket", "Boys in the Band", "Time for Heroes" and "Don't Look Back into the Sun". They sing and play and live this life that sits in the previously unexplored point halfway between the urban assault of The Clash and the arch romanticism of The Smiths. The new album is produced by Mick Jones and engineered by Bill Price (who worked on Londons Calling, and with Guns n Roses).
The Libertines is heartbreaking if you know the story of Pete and Carl. It is a history of the libertines, songs that in demos used to be happy and uplifting such as "Music when the Lights go Out" and "What Katie Did" are tear-jerking, especially the former. The album makes me want to cry sometimes, but I've always thought that's a good thing in music. Anything that can evoke such a strong emotion in me is fantastic. 'Can't Stand me now' and 'What Became of the Likely Lads' are Pete and Carl's story, and 'The Saga' shows how Pete's drug addiction is spiralling out of control. He sings "i ain't got a problem - it's you with the problem!". The following track Road to Ruin is Carl's response to that, trying to make him see that "all you can be, is right here in your hands".
I highly recommend this album to anyone.
A main factor in the band's sound is the love/hate dynamic between the two co-frontmen. Anyone who has seen the Libertines live will have witnessed the amazing energy the two have, when they are feeding off one another. The problem on their second album is that one part of the partnership is not pulling his weight, namely Pete Doherty. Having grown to love a lot of the songs on the album after hearing them live or in demo form, it was a massive disappointment when I first heard the album versions.
Doherty slurs his way through "Don't be shy", robbing it of the urgency that made it so appealing at first. "Music when the lights go out" was wonderful in demo form, mainly down to a 1940s-style cello part. On the album version this has been removed and the pace has been quickened, giving the song an anodyne feel. When I first heard "Can't stand me now" I thought it was the best thing they'd ever done, but the slapdash way in which it has been produced fails to portray the subtle changes in melody and the charm of the vocal sparring between Doherty and Barat. Why Mick Jones was given production duties rather than Bernard Butler, who presided over "What a waster" and "Don't look back into the sun" is beyond me.
The album is still leaps and bounds ahead of pretty much everything else around at the moment.
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