THE ART OF FALLING APART
The Libertines' fierce, poignant new album rises from the ashes of their co-leaders' friendship
By Chris Morris
It's one of the miracles of the modern world that the Libertines' extraordinary and heartbreaking second Rough Trade album got made at all. They probably called it simply The Libertines just to prove to themselves that they still existed.
Since its rapid ascendancy to the top of the U.K. pile, the band has experienced career vicissitudes that are extremely compressed even by the second-by-second standards of rock 'n' roll. Imagine, say, the first 25 years of the Rolling Stones' tumultuous history jammed into 24 months, and you get the picture.
Fronted by co-singers/guitarists/songwriters and longtime comrades Pete Doherty and Carl Barât, the Libertines were immediately celebrated by the British press with the release of their 2002 debut album, Up the Bracket. It was a biting and eruptive bow that mated steely social commentary with bright, punkishly slovenly tunefulness. It also came with an old-school imprimatur, produced by Clash guitarist Mick Jones.
But the ink was barely dry on the rave reviews when everything started to fall apart, and the Libs' saga became a tabloid soap opera of towering proportions. By spring 2003, Doherty's addiction to junk and crack was no secret, thanks to countless missed gigs and careening performances. He was ousted from the band in June, and it sallied off on tour without him. A month later, Doherty was arrested for burglarizing Barât's apartment; he served one month of a six-month prison sentence.
Incredibly, Barât immediately reconciled with his wayward mate: A picture of the two musicians displaying their identical tattoos, taken on a reunion gig the day Doherty was released from jail last October, graces the cover of The Libertines. The pair somehow managed to write a new batch of songs and record them with the understanding Jones again producing. But, by the time the sophomore set was issued in August, Doherty, who had walked away from several rehab attempts, had again been hurled from the band. Lately, he's been performing with his own group, Babyshambles.
The tragedy of this tale animates almost every song on The Libertines; the album seethes with disappointment, disillusionment, anger, disgust, frustration, and pity (and self-pity), undisguised and undiluted. It's among the most self-referential records ever made, and the high pitch of the candid emotion on it, caught with first-take immediacy, is almost alarming.
The shocks begin with the first track, "Can't Stand Me Now," on which Barât and Doherty lob accusations at each other in hobbled voices like betrayed lovers. (The kiss-or-kill homoeroticism of their stage performances has been a source of frequent comment by U.K. observers.) The piercing-yet-melodic song asks, "Have we enough to keep it together?" "Just barely" is the probable answer.
Many of the other numbers here could be lost-love songs, yet it's impossible to read them as anything but the testament of two blokes trying to hang on to each other with every fiber of their being, even as the will to persevere evaporates before their bloodshot eyes. Hear "Last Post on the Bugle" ("If I have to go/I will be thinking of your love"), "Music When the Lights Go Out" ("I no longer hear the music"), or the climactic "What Became of the Likely Lads," which woefully concludes, "Oh, what became of forever?" The latter tune refers to an English situation comedy, but the titular lads are, of course, the boys of the Libertines, tabbed most likely to succeed a mere two years - or is it centuries? - ago.
Several short, punkish tunes lash out at English racism, snobbery, and class war, and the best of them rip it dead, thanks largely to Gary Powell's rabbit-punching drumming. But the sorrowful heartbeat of The Libertines beats in Barât and Doherty's songs of recrimination, pain, and hope dimming with the day. It's a record born of the death of friendship and love, and few albums in recent memory hold the same kind of cauterizing emotional charge. We can only pray the Libertines survive to make another.Published: 09/16/2004
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
