The Libertines - All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade

 The Libertines - All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade (EMI)

Few pop artists are as good in their later work as in that which made them famous. Mozart and Rembrandt's last work was probably their best but on Hackney Diamonds the Stones were their own best tribute act and The Day Before You Came was a different sort of Abba but even the most talented of pop acts, whatever glories they achieve as they develop, don't seem to end up in a better place than some of those they had been to. Peter Doherty, though, whether with Carl Barat or not, and having survived that dangerous age of 27, is proving more durable than the mercurial phenonmenon that he looks as if he should have been.

If All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade doesn't quite have a Can't Stand Me Now on it then we shouldn't have expected it to but it is an instant hit as soon as it begins and continues what has for the most part been an impressive catalogue.

The survey of broken England's dreaming is brought forward from 1976/77 and nothing new but it's the Clash more than the Sex Pistols he owes the bigger debt to, Mustangs bringing to mind All the Young Punks, the downbeat lives retaining a defiant optimism under 'dishwater skies' while I Have a Friend begins like the Buzzcocks. Merry Old England is a mordant meditation on the migrants who see it as a place of opportunity nonetheless.

Oh S*** is another of those in which Pete relies heavily on the degraded demotic, as he did in Gunga Din, but one of their signature guitar riffs makes it an immediate crowd pleaser. Using Swan Lake for a tune was done by Public Image Limited on the Metal Box album in 1979 so that's hardly innovative but stabbings weren't such an everyday occurence then. Untimely death has been a regular part of Pete's life and he takes a chillingly matter-of-fact view of it, especially when one realizes how much Songs They Never Play on the Radio owes to Karen Carpenter on Yesterday Once More. They are not so far apart given the breakdown of the genre barriers that pop music was once defined by. The irony is that wholesome, gorgeous Karen died aged 32 and delinquent Peter is still with us at 45. But after an album with hardly a missed beat on it, that was the track I played over and over.

 

His ongoing insociance and faux vulnerability combined with his smartarse self absorption makes for the sort of mystique that hangs around a certain sort of creative artist but all one has to be is any good and his formula goes on working and providing, disarmingly and often charmingly. For me he's the last of the English geezers. Pop music has been over for some time, commodified, sanitized, recondite and all been done before. It's the same with poetry in which I similarly have difficulty with anybody much under the age of 45, and 'classical' music by anybody much younger than me. Those ships have continued to sail without me. Doherty, though, is retro as well as keeping on giving. I was reminded that I picked up the Babyshambles Down in Albion album a couple of weeks ago. Once I got round to it, it was a bit makeshift and unconvincing. Anybody can have a bad patch because form is temporary but class is forever and he came through into an unlikely 'maturity', if you can call it that in someone who remains somehow child-like.