- Label
- Parlophone
- Release date
- 16th March 2009
- Genre
- Indie
- Buy this album
- Order CD
The poet junkie comes of age.
Anyone who failed to fall for the shambolic pleasures of The Libertines may simply have cast Peter Doherty as a charmless waster, a hopeless addict whose anarchic – and boring - habits aren’t worthy of newsprint let alone all the second chances the British law courts have given him. What fans know and perhaps all those judges glimpsed at is that beneath the conspicuous self-destruction lurks an artist of genuine talent.
Here, finally, on his first solo album the fog appears to be clearing. The sketchy, half-formed ideas and half-arsed approach that marked out his time in post Libertines band Babyshambles have been replaced by something approaching clarity.
The obsession with nonsensical rhymes, drug paraphernalia and a mythical lost England remains on the opening Arcadie and throughout but for once there is some basis in reality on 1939 Returning, which tells the story of a wartime evacuee now being moved from her London nursing home decades later, and the sweet ramblings of A Little Death Around The Eyes and Last Of The English Roses.
The vocals are still from the drunken dribbler school of delivery but they’re fleshed out by some magnificent orchestral folk arrangements – lifted no end by the contributions of The Smiths producer Stephen Street and Blur’s guitarist Graham Coxon.
Still vague then, but a warm wonderful vague. Perhaps he’s worthy of all the attention after all.
More to try:
Tim Buckley: Happysad
Graham Coxon: Happiness In Magazines
The View: Hats Off To The Buskers
Dirty Pretty Things: Romance At Short Notice
