It's taken me a while to muster the courage to write about this album, but I've been listening to it day in day out for the last couple of weeks and whatever way I look at it, it's really good. There's such a powerful honesty to everything on this album that even if the music couldn't match up, it would still make profoundly affecting listening. However, the music really is great. Ragged, for sure, but then everyone moaned at them when they released the relatively polished “Don't Look Back Into The Sun” last year, so who cares? Ragged they are and ragged is how we like them.

The ongoing saga of Pete and Carl's troubled relationship is laid out fairly barely, particularly on opening and closing tracks (and first two singles) “Can't Stand Me Now” and “What Became Of The Likely Lads”, as well as, predictably, on “The Saga”, and a quick glance through the lyrics sheet will give a fairly comprehensive rundown of the problems currently besieging the Libertines camp (Pete's on drugs, Carl chucks him out of the band, Pete breaks into Carl's house, etc…) Still, what makes it such a good album is fantastic songs like “Narcissist”, Pete's Joe Strummer yelps on “The Man Who Would Be King”, and the awesome trio of the simplistic, Wire-esque “Campaign Of Hate”, through the Motown influenced “What Katie Did” and into the Clash-on-the-high-seas riot of “Tomblands”.

It's far more eclectic than their debut, perhaps reflecting the wide time period that these songs cover, with many of them dating back to the Babyshambles sessions and “Last Post On The Bugle” dating back as far as the mid sixties, when the main melody was originally written by Australian band The Master's Apprentices (Stop the press! Pete nicks something!) But then, as anyone who's heard The Clash's “Sandinista” will tell you, eclecticism can be a mixed blessing, so are there any stinkers? Well, not really; “Don't Be Shy” sounds like Pete's making it up as he goes along, but for many people therein lies its charm, and “The Ha Ha Wall” lacks the edge that makes the rest of the album so compelling, but nestled inbetween “Narcissist” and the disorderly “Arbeit Macht Frei”, it serves a useful function in the overall texture of the album. At the time of writing, Pete's gone back to his mum and dad's place, to see if they can beat drugs where rehab clinics, prison and Thai monks have failed so all bets are still off on what happens next. -Ian Martin, Sep.14.04.

The Libertines