Interesting (over-enthusiastic?!) review in the Culture bit of The Sunday Times:
Mark Edwards gets an exclusive preview of Pete Doherty’s latest, Down in Albion — and finds the best of it is brilliantThere’s a song on the new Babyshambles album, Down in Albion, called A Rebours. It is named after the 1884 novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans (translated as Against the Grain, or Against Nature). This tells us several things about Pete Doherty. First, it reminds us that, as well as the drug-addled ne’er-do-well who inhabits the tabloids, Doherty is a clever, widely read young man who immerses himself in aspects of culture that most rock’n’rollers never encounter. Then, should you read the novel, you will encounter a chilling analogy for Doherty’s own life. Huysmans tells the tale of a man so appalled by contemporary life that he retreats to an isolated house where he sees nobody and fashions an elaborate alternative world, because “he believed that the imagination could provide a more-than-adequate substitute for the vulgar reality of actual experience”.
Doherty has been busy avoiding reality for a while now: initially with his first band, the Libertines, sailing the Good Ship Albion to Arcadia, a hazily defined paradise that combined William Blake’s rural idyll and Tony Hancock’s 1950s world of coffee in glass cups and a pint down the Hand and Racket. It was a lovely conceit, but, crucially, it was a vision of England that had already ceased to exist. The Libertines’ voyage was doomed before they set sail.
More prosaically, Doherty has been hiding from reality in that time-honoured rock-star way — behind a wall of drugs. In 2004, referring to his former Libertines bandmate Carl Barât, he said bluntly: “In the end, I just got better conversations out of the needle than I did from Carl.” Now, in A Rebours, he sings: “I’ve been running round this world too much, girl/Pretending not to see/ What’s thrilling me is killing me.”
The tabloids try diligently to uncover Doherty’s “secrets”, but his life has long been an open book. In fact, it’s a series of open books — the diaries/notebooks that Doherty calls the Books of Albion and lays open to public inspection at www dot ?!@ com
One of these has A Rebours scrawled on its cover. In it, you’ll find the lyrics to two songs: Can’t Stand Me Now and La Belle et la Bête. The first is the opener on the last Libertines album, a brilliant song tracing his disintegrating relationship with Barât (though much of that album was disappointing).
While Doherty’s tabloid fame has grown, we’ve been waiting for some hard evidence that his talent, rather than merely his lifestyle, justifies the attention. La Belle et la Bête, the first track on Down in Albion (out on November 14), begins a fabulous five-song onslaught that proves he really is worth worrying about. A hard-edged rockabilly beat underscores a narrative lyric that is interrupted by Doherty’s sometime girlfriend Kate Moss singing: “Is she more beautiful than me?” Then Fk Forever begins with a stinging guitar riff and evolves into what may be Doherty’s theme tune. “What’s the difference between death and glory?” he asks. “I can’t tell.” A Rebours itself features an unexpectedly subtle, rubbery bass line and post-punk guitar work. The 32nd of December is the poppiest moment; Pipedown the grungiest.
These tracks share that magical quality of music that sounds as if it’s about to fall apart, but never quite does. “We’ve bucked the trend,” explains Mick Jones, the Clash guitarist, who produced the album. “These days, everyone’s concerned about how it will sound on the radio. There’s been criticism of the single, Killamangiro, that it isn’t radio-friendly. Oh, really? So what were they expecting? People have got used to hearing sterile music, but we do it for real. The reactive spark — that’s how the best performances begin.”
Standards drop in the middle third of the album, but pick up again on the home straight. Albion is the real anthem here. A beautiful track, it epitomises what makes Doherty so important: when he is at his best, he simply opens his heart and invites you in. Two tracks later, this triumph is eclipsed by the stunning Loyalty Song, which finds common ground between the Kinks and the Clash.
Listen to the lyrics and you’ll hear Doherty’s sadness and confusion. “There’s no one gonna keep me from.../Ain’t no fker gonna keep me from my.../No one can keep me from my ...” he begins defiantly, then realises he doesn’t even know where he’s trying to get to. It ends with him repeatedly asking “What did I dream?” Unlike many albums, Down in Albion has a proper ending. The last track, Merry Go Round, finishes with an eerie section where Doherty’s voice fades, but not in the usual way. Jones explains: “He goes off into another room, still singing. He’s wandered off looking for something — I think it was a lighter — and you hear him fall over a music stand. So we left it in, and that’s how the album ends. In fact, he stayed there for about an hour. Someone gave him a guitar and we carried on recording.”
Shortly after Huysmans’s novel was published, a critic wrote: “After such a book, the only choice left open to the author is between the muzzle of a pistol and the foot of the Cross.” Huysmans found religion. Doherty faces a similarly stark decision: between the oblivion of an overdose and a long, hard climb back to reality. Down in Albion shows enough evidence of his talent to suggest that we should all care about the choices he makes.
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" ....i have to make a new album for the people, but i have to drink campari with my friends.... "
What a mess.
