Carl Barât and the Jackals - Let It Reign

It’s been a disappointing decade for Carl Barât. Lumbering awkwardly from project to project in the years since the last violent chord strum of ‘What Became of The Likely Lads’, the trio of albums that he’s released post-Pete (two with Dirty Pretty Things plus a largely-forgotten solo effort) still sound extremely pedestrian in comparison to the reckless energy that defined The Libertines’ initial tenure.

True to form, Barat’s first album with new band, The Jackals, is the most worrying example to date of its creator’s curdled craft. A predictable set of up-tempo punk thrashers that seldom threaten to upend expectation, ‘Let It Reign’’s abrasiveness does little to deflect from its disappointing lack of ambition. The record’s ground-shaking volume serving only to mute the lonely whimper of man whose efforts to rewrite the past have pushed him to breaking point.

Beginning inauspiciously, the slickness of its opening salvo would, in Barât’s drug-guzzling heyday, have been deemed far too safe for consumption. Built on a bed of squalling riffs and talk of wasted opportunities, clanking lead single ‘Glory Days’ quickly reveals itself the meeker relative of ‘Bang Bang, You’re Dead’. In truth, its successor, ‘Victory Gin’, swathed in doleful trumpets and thudding drums, runs little better. “We are not afraid of anyone” insists Barât as part of the song’s disarmingly bland refrain, his vocal, angry and weaponised, easily crowded out by an insipid undercarriage of rattling guitars on the equally lacklustre ‘A Storm Is Coming’.