The Libertines - Anthems for Doomed Youth

Lead single ‘Gunga Din’ certainly seemed pretty watered-down with its diluted radio-rock chorus, but it’s fair to say that the poppier production has worked fantastically with some of ‘Anthems for Doomed Youth’’s tracks. Everything is far more grown-up, thoughtful and certainly a lot slower – nothing really comes close to the urgent turn-that-racket-down of ‘Mayday’ or ‘I Get Along’. That’s what the cleaner sound works beautifully with; ‘You’re My Waterloo’ is spellbindingly poignant with its delicate piano-interludes and chord sequences while ‘Iceman’ sounds bloody fantastic with its Beatles-y drums.

The breadth of the material is astounding compared to their previous stuff; Pete and Carl have essentially brought their respective solo projects on board ship, creating a new marriage of sounds that’s less coherent but far more interesting, like the Pulp-y ‘The Milkman’s Horse’ or Jam-inspired ‘Barbarians’. The record is less successful when it sounds too much like The Libertines’ earlier stuff – ‘Glasgow Coma Scale Blues’ has the kind of call-and-response vocals from ‘Can’t Stand Me Now’, but something feels missing. ‘Fury of Chonburi’ stomps along but once again, the chorus comes off a little too poppy and doesn’t capture the sleaziness of the titular city. It’s a mostly successful and far more mature record; it just has to be seen as a more grown-up ‘Anthems for Doomed Youth’ rather than the anthems from doomed youth that they previously brought.

Tags: The Libertines, Reviews, Album Reviews