The Libertines
The Libertines stumbled straight into the big time with their 2002 debut, Up the Bracket, and even without Doherty’s antics they’d probably be the most talked-about band in Britain right now–their second full-length, The Libertines (Rough Trade), hit the UK charts at number one when it came out this summer. Mick Jones of the Clash produced both albums, Peter Perrett of the Only Ones has joined them onstage and in the studio, and last fall former Creation Records boss Alan McGee signed on as their manager. The band’s been held up as London’s “authentic” answer to the Strokes–organic, spontaneous, unhinged, and enthralling. The British music magazine NME, no doubt hard-pressed to find an appropriately hyperbolic metaphor after squandering so many on Starsailor and the Darkness, has said the Libertines rock “like God on an angel dust bender.”
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I’ve never seen Doherty sing live (except on TV), and I know I’d miss his onstage chemistry with Barat if I’d ever felt it in the first place. But Barat’s voice, slightly deeper and coarser, is fine by me, and he has no trouble moving between careless cool, romantic nostalgia, and fevered intensity. As a front man he more than held his own on Saturday: on “What a Waster” he sounded electrified, and to kick off the lead riff of “Last Post on the Bugle” he spun on his cowboy boots like a figure skater.
