Babyshambles
Down In Albion

THE REVIEW

Pete Doherty: the last true cursed poet or just an overrated buffoon? The rebirth of rock'n'roll or just another case of inexplicable and undeserved success?

It's hard to answer such questions. From my point of view, I can only say that our dear Pete Doherty is wrong to think he can do what Noel Gallagher did 10 years ago, injecting even absinthe into his veins at times, thinking he can write masterpiece after masterpiece with a head that doesn't understand a thing anymore. I would be much more curious to hear a normal singer-songwriter write decent songs rather than this (at times) whining that sings, vomits, and screams simultaneously.

The image of a man who is no longer there, who had undisputed talent ruined by his addiction, his slavery to drugs, which has rendered him impotent. Has the rock'n'roll of the past really returned with this guy who does everything, or is it just a lie? Is Pete Doherty really the last rock'n'roll star, who does drugs, has sex, and doesn't care about anything? If rock'n'roll means doing these things... then no. Rock'n'roll is passion, it's playing well, it's putting your soul into things... and as far as this is concerned, Pete Doherty isn't there, and this album, the debut of his band Babyshambles (formed after the breakup of the Libertines, those many miss) is proof of it.

Album opens with "La Belle Et La Bete", good opening track, featuring the beautiful model Kate Moss (at the time the muse of Pete, who after being dumped, will even attempt suicide), who doesn't showcase extraordinary vocal qualities but isn't to be thrown away either (I'd rather see her instead of Lady Gaga or Madonna, who, with all due respect, have become tiresome). By the second track, you might call it a half-masterpiece, Fuck Forever, and if it were up to me, I’d tell Pete Doherty to write more pieces like this, which almost take us back to the good times, when rock was truly divine music. Pete Doherty quite reminds me, forgive the risky football comparison, of Clarence Seedorf: 4 lousy matches, 1 as the best in the world. That's how Pete is a bit: 4 lifeless, lackluster songs and a song that makes us think of how this guy's talent is wasted due to drugs.

With the quartet A'Rebours, The 32nd of December, Pipedown and Sticks And Stones, it falls into anonymity: not ugly songs, mind you, but without real energy, anonymous, at times just noise, and the clear conviction that while the band members were playing, they also had a syringe up their arm. In fact, it was confirmed that the entire album was recorded under the influence of drugs, and you can clearly hear it with the studio screams, chairs moving abruptly, laughter, etc. Finally, you come a bit back to the surface with "Killamangiro" and "8 Dead Boys" (in my opinion the best of the album) which add some quality to the album, hitherto empty apart from the first two tracks already mentioned. With In Love With A Feeling we return to anonymity and the dimension of "tracks without a real point of reference and without a real sense of existence", and with "Pentonville" we fall into complete blind darkness, with a drunken cellmate of Pete singing in his place a song that sounds like a wasted Sean Paul (the fact that Sean Paul, sober, isn't even all that great says a lot...). I don't mention the remaining tracks (apart from Albion, which without those nonsensical noises at the beginning would be a nice composition) because in my opinion the album closes (and rather pathetically) with "Pentonville".

In short, the most English Englishman (besides the Gallagher eyebrows) has failed in the attempt to rise after leaving the Libertines (it seems hypocritical not to say that many miss them), releasing a CD without real bite, empty, and it’s a shame because the talent is there, and it’s sad to hear Pete at the end of 2008 say "I have stopped with drugs" and find him in 2009 in the bathroom of a plane injecting heroin: if no one will try to help this young man (although I presume it would be useless) it might extinguish the life of a shy, insecure boy, with great talent killed by drugs and the NME.

For now, this album dated 2005 leaves nothing, some might consider it a finally rock'n'roll album, others a dime-a-dozen album if not below average, and I repeat that it's not enough to do drugs, pick up a guitar, and play like a headless chicken to be called rock'n'roll. We can credit (or discredit, as you like) Pete Doherty for bringing back to today an old custom: doing drugs while recording; sure, the results are apparent after... The leader of the Babyshambles will manage in 2007 to release an undoubtedly superior album, "Shotter's Nation", but it’s still way too little for a genius boy like him, from whom everyone vainly expects more.