Babyshambles
Down In Albion

THE REVIEW

An album centered on sonic nothingness, shapeless and filled with drugs in the wrong way. Pete Doherty, arrogant and in the grip of a clear delusion of grandeur in Britain, has produced the most disastrous rock album of the musical season.

The Babyshambles are truly a phenomenon to study.
This band was born from the little head of Pete Doherty, that is, the toxic kid who, according to certain press in the UK, would be the new absolute genius of "rock composition",
the new Kurt Cobain, the new Baudelaire, etc., etc. Ransack a friend's house? "Magnificent! Let's put him on the front page!" I do it, and they put me in jail. He drugs himself like a mandrill, doesn’t sleep for a week straight, stabs a guy, and prostitutes himself? "The Top! He'll sell 100,000 more copies! He's an absolute genius!" I do it, and I guess I die. In short, inexplicably everything Pete touched in the last three years has become sparkling gold. It's been a while since the good debut with the self-titled debut of the now-defunct Libertines, yet for Doherty things haven’t changed, on the contrary.
Lucky him who enjoys such attention!
Poor us who are still spending, if not money then at least small lyophilized hopes, in his artistic intuitions. But this time the game is over: "Down In Albion" represents the pinnacle of nothingness. A record that in the intentions of its creators, perhaps, wanted to unite the sound paths of the Smiths to the much-loved Clash, without giving up the dirty sound of guitars, which had so positively exposed the Libertines during the "Up The Bracket" era. Instead... absolute megalomania.
The voice is increasingly boorish until it resembles that of a drunk Damon Albarn, and there is even a song halfway between reggae and hip hop, rapped in a manner that made the fortune of some well-known talented Jamaican tank top wearers of the "MTV biz" like Sean Paul and Shaggy (and if my grandad were to wear a tank top even just inside the house, my grandma would skin him... yet he speaks Marsican which seems like the version of Scatman John banned to minors). In other tracks where the listener is not forced to endure endless "la la la la la laaaa" they are still bound to wait a good thirty seconds before the song really starts: but don’t worry, friends, there’s good Pete who entertains you cheerfully by whistling, speaking softly, or even trying to pull a good riff from the out-of-tune guitar. Sometimes Doherty remembers the Pixies and then something good seems to be able to come out from an evil and distorted "verse", but then, inevitably, the atmosphere returns to that of the pub on Saturday night in Ireland and everyone ends up singing out of tune hugging each other. All friends. All happy.
The perfect snapshot of a fall on the wet floor.

Pete's damaged brain - ...and then at the beginning of the first track there should be something beautiful... oh, yes... here it is! I’ll just nicely stick the beginning part of "The Man Who Would Be King" on it so that no one notices or if they should notice they’ll say it’s a brilliant self-quote! And then this song’s title needs to be "What Katy Did Next" because it comes after "What Katy Did": people will think I’m even cooler... and I really did sleep with Kate. Or was I sleeping? Was it a dream?!? Boh... in doubt, I'll shoot something else into my veins... -