18

Babyshambles
Down In Albion

(NB: This is an edited version of a review I wrote of this album for the main site, which you may have already read. You can find this more extensive review here.)

I approached this with trepidation: would it be something like the brilliant Libertines debut, Up the Bracket, which I still play regularly with a smile, or like their dodgy second album, The Libertines, which I wish I hadn’t bothered buying? And the answer is, perhaps predictably: it’s somewhere in between.

Down in Albion retains the lyrical originality and idiosyncrasy of The Libertines (“wake up on the fire blanket/lying on my back/staring at the ceiling/staring at the cracks” or “that boy’s so shy/why d’you punch out his lights?” being examples I like). It also retains much of the same musical style. In fact, hang on, isn’t this just the new Libertines album? ‘Yes’ is the answer, pure and simple. I can’t tell that Carl Barat has left to be honest. Libertines 3, then… Stand out tracks: ‘Pipedown’ has a great stomp to it, and a really stripped down, slightly menacing feel to its verse. ‘Fuck Forever’ has a wonderful sing along chorus, and ‘Albion’ itself has a great dreamy quality to it (though it goes on a little too long). I think my favourite, though, is the final track, ‘Merry Go Round’. This is as simple as it gets, vocals and acoustic guitar, and benefits from a total lack of production. It is what I think is called a ‘raw’ song and it highlights Doherty’s talent for exactly what it is: unrefined natural song writing with no technical skill or finesse. When he gets it right, Doherty gets it very right indeed. Unfortunately, he is also more than capable of utter disaster: the plodding pseudo-ska of ‘Sticks and Stones’ (complete with unbelievably irritating whistling and horrible chorus) is pretty darn bad, whilst the attempted dalliance into reggae that is ‘Pentonville’ was a decision so awful that it can only have been intravenously induced. No, please no. The album’s only must skip track, but one is always too many…

A mixed bag, certainly, but with enough quality songs on it to creep into the lower reaches of the list. This has no bearing on my view of the Doherty circus more generally, mind…