The Libertines - Up the Bracket poll

i have no idea how this thread will do on ILM. there is not a lot of talk about these guys around here. i personally think that they caught lightning in a bottle and made some incredible music together.

what a waster is as good as they ever got but i do have a soft spot for the title track

Completely overlooked in the US. Fucking fantastic album, and it's hard to choose a favorite. I'll have to go with Time For Heroes for the brilliant lyrics.

virtual tie btwn radio america and time for heroes

Used to love this band/album and collect all their singles but over the years I've ended up hating them. Now I know longer own anything by them but did make a lot of money selling off all their singles. I used to love this album so much but seriously just looking at that track listing I can't understand why. Radio America, The Boy Looked at Johnny and Boys in The Band are all really poor songs.

What a Waster is their best song and along with Don't Look Back Into The Sun is the only one I can still enjoy. That's mainly down to them being produced by Bernard Butler who actually ended up playing a lot of the guitar parts on those recordings and made them sound like a great band.

What a waster though Don't Look back into the Sun and Can't Stand me Now are my actual favorite Libertines songs.

heard this album once. remember liking it, but deciding that it didn't fit properly, bad stitching, something like that. was nice though. looked good in the window.

death on the stairs

I love tbis album end to end. None of their biography meant shit to us Yanks. This and their next album are two of the more stirring depictions of boy-boy love.

I started a "Can't Stand Me Now" thread yeeears ago.

God, it's such a good song.

bad stitching is right, contenderizer, it's part of the charm.

"What a Waster", natch

another vote for title track

This energized me like hell at the time.
Gonna have trouble deciding between the first four songs and Tell the King.

Ran down to NYC from Boston to see their shows for the first album, which were something else. So excited I got up on the stage with them during "I Get Along" (before realizing I was the only male... and the only person over 30 doing so. that said, i'm happy vid exists of this moment of getting all caught up!).

We had dinner with them in Boston right after, which was by far the most eventful work dinner w musicians I've ever had in my zillion years in music, via them being fairly incorrigible (yet still fun). Boston show was great too.

Anyway, loads of character, energy and spirit and incredible (sloppy) guitar playing. haven't listened in a dog's age though. I should pop this on again.

their songs are basically Keef's thwarted love songs to Mick at punk speed.

'Tell The King', probably. "And you know how I feel out of place until I'm levered off my face and I can't work out what you're on about" - I've always loved the way Carl Barat delivers this line. He's got that slurring/singing voice that makes him an ideal candidate to sing about getting wasted. Didn't achieve that sort of vaguely squalid and grubby pathos often enough on the other Libs songs / with his second band though. 'Death On The Stairs' a close second.

Very mixed feelings on these guys. I'm of an age where they were my introduction to 'proper' music fandom or whatever, the first time I ever decided to read all the interviews, download the bootlegs etc. Doing the genealogy of learning about The Smiths, The Clash, The Jam, The Only Ones and so on and so on as a result of what got written about The Libertines.

When you've had that kind of connection with a particular band, when they become the window through which you view the world and the conduit through which you approach other cultural artifacts (I used to read the books that got mentioned, as well as listen to the music - hey man, I was 12 years old!) I think it will always be kind of difficult to completely let go of them or write them off.

But in reality, I can't really listen to them anymore except for 'Can't Stand Me Now', which still plays as an absolutely towering song to these ears. Almighty mess though it undoubtedly was, I do think that Down In Albion's portrait of a talented man teetering on the brink of utter ruin ended up being a far more intriguing listen as an album than either Up The Bracket or The Libertines.

All that said, I did have a soft spot for those sorta skiffly/Merseybeat/novelty/whatever they were tunes that were gradually unearthed from their earliest days. There was a lovely naivety and timelessness to some of those songs, for all that they sounded kinda cheap.

We die in the class we were born, and that's a class of our own my love

this is a great record that made no sense to me when i first heard it, seemed to be a rough assemblage of punk signifiers only half-sung, and then it clicked suddenly, maybe when i first heard the title track out of context (somewhere, i don't remember where), which is what i'm voting for

oh but i could've also voted for "horrorshow" which is quite a rush

"Radio America" is the only weak tune.

I mean, they got better with soggy ballads on the eponymous record.

SPEAKING OF...man, I haven't played this thing (i.e. the eponymous record) in years and it sounds terrific.

A band very easy to love, being young.

As someone said above (probably), the Bernard Butler produced tracks were better than the Mick Jones

.. Equivalents.

Where's the "this band were fucking shite" option?

i'm thinkin there's a ragged charm to the MJ tracks that I don't hear as much of in the Butler.
all those noodly, spidery guitar lines really work for me.

Death on the Stairs, though I prefer the Bernard Butler mix.

There was a lovely naivety and timelessness to some of those songs, for all that they sounded kinda cheap.
xpost

I have a bootleg of Doherty's early demos, which is utterly charming and lovely. I used to play it even more often than the 2 libs albums, which I loved. Songs like "I Love you but you're green" and "Albion", which he later fouled up with skaggy babyshambles versions.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-e7VWvtvRQ

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6COwmlgH2-s

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpDbQNBo0Jk

I was thinking of stuff like this, their Legs X1 demo and various other bits and bobs. The earliest stuff they recorded as a band.

It doesn't really stand up as material, but I always found it quite interesting and endearing that, in the beginning at least, these guys with a reputation for playing very energetic punk-influenced rock and doing loads of drugs would probably have been much happier just putting on cabaret shows and making these melancholic little English curios.

Apologies in advance if those videos embed, I have tried to prevent it by removing the first part of the url, but I dunno if that's how this works. Not very good at it

I've got a three-cd bootleg that I'd forgotten all about, and it turns out the tracks I like are on that, the second album, or somewhere in Babyshambles' trail of shame. I gave Up The Bracket a spin earlier and tbh it sounds really weak, four decent songs tops. I'll try again tomorrow.

I love Windsor Davies' post up there though, the mix of innocent adoration and weary contempt is just how I feel about memories of bands-I-once-loved.

your other post (though that one's fine too), you xp'ed me into confusion

thanx for those posts Windsor, I only knew Bucket Shop of the 3 songs. I also love the Legs 11 stuff - Music When the Lights Go Out with the cello is pretty unbeatable (prefer it to the s/t album version). Hooray for the 21st Century is also killer.

what's the matter with radio america

maybe i'm biased from hating most of this record

What A Waster.

The most inexplicable bonus track of all time? How could that make the regular album?

It wasn't on the album as it was produced by Bernard Butler but I guess that doesn't really explain why they re-recorded I Get Along with Mick Jones and put that on the album. Maybe they didn't want to mess with what a great job he'd done on What a Waster?

They later re-recorded Death On The Stairs with Bernard Butler (as Bernard loved the song but hated the album version) and he did a really great job on that too. If Bernard hadn't fallen out with Pete he could have made the album so much better, I'm sure people will disagree as the scrappy production seems to be part of it's appeal.

doesn't really explain why they re-recorded I Get Along with Mick Jones

Really? I only recall one version ..

OK how about "The Dilly Boys" ?

It's either raggedly charming or total rubbish, right?

The essential dichotomy of everything that Pete Doherty's ever recorded, surely?

'Dilly Boys' is rubbish, fwiw. Certainly doesn't have the charm of a song like 'Never Never'.

Doherty's subsequent nonsense has put me off returning to this record but in the context of 00s indie it still stands up as a rare example of a band creating its own world of values, references and in-jokes - like Windsor Davies says, it was a gateway to other things, not just a bunch of indie-disco floorfillers. Around this time they were the funniest, most charismatic interviewees imaginable. They made me wish I was in a band. Afterwards, not so much.

Never Never, ahh, I love that too

This sounds much better on headphones fwiw. Fluffed notes a-plenty but I can live with those more than out-of-time playing & singing, which is what I was getting before.

The Good Old Days is where they nailed it imo, so I've went for that.

I kid you not - last night I went to see Richard Hell read from his new autobiography (I Dreamt I was a Very Clean Tramp), and as I shuffled up to the table to have him sign the book and my vinyl copy of 'Blank Generation,' I asked him, "so what tunes have you been digging the most these last few years" (he left music in 1984, I believe), and he said without hesitation: "The Libertines" ...

Ah, that's nice, they do have that Richard Hell vibe.

listened to this today, had a blast. really got my toes tapping and put me in a great mood, being Friday helped. voting for "Up the Bracket" though the true answer probably is "What a Waster."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMUyRSfmVwk

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Horrirshow or Boys in the Band FER sure

Went with Horrorshow

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

fair results

I meant to vote in this - title track, easy. I used to love this record. Will have to pull it out and see how it's worn. But it was no mean trick they pulled off for at least one album - loose enough that you fear it's gonna fall apart any second, yet tight enough that it still yanks you forward like a riptide. The drummer certainly helped.

I agree about the drummer. Doherty never found another one of his ilk, and his music suffered accordingly (well, maybe the crack had something to do with it too....)

The drummer was easily the best thing about the band, in my opinion.

he's even better on the followup, in my view, where his talents are needed more than ever

Like the Arctic Monkeys, I thought this band were colossally overrated back in the day but these days, divorced from the ludicrous levels of NME hype and Doherty's incredibly twattish smacked-up antics which I seemingly found myself reading about pretty much every day in the music press and national newspapers from 2003 to at least 2008, these records sound pretty good. Not world-shatteringly as awesome as the NME would have had people believe in the '00s, but there's some genuinely good songwriting there buried in the ramshackle performances.

The Libertines > Up the Bracket.

Also, while we're on the subject of Doherty - the first Babyshambles album is mostly excrement and essentially one long "say no to hard drugs" advert. 'Albion' is a pretty song, but it's treated with utter disdain by its own author here. Shotter's Nation, though, is actually pretty damn good - Doherty was probably the worst he ever was around that time, but it's a testament to Stephen Street as a producer that he managed to wrench that record out of him.

their songs are basically Keef's thwarted love songs to Mick at punk speed.

― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 2, 2013 11:46 AM

Yeah, that's not far off the mark - many of their songs are about each other.

Their shambly ersatz Stones/Kinks filtered through punk reminds me of Nikki Sudden, don't know if Doherty every mentioned him or it's just a coincidence

Awful.. Fucking dreck.

'Music When The Lights Go Out' from their second album is such a beautiful song. 'Time For Heroes' is great too. It's a shame that Doherty was at his most famous when he was at his most useless. Watch any interview with him circa 2002 - the hard drugs ravaged that guy.

Great album, yeah the nikki sudden thing would make sense

who changed the picture to them kissing? very funny.

i guess that could have been me but don't remember that.

So they've fucked,right

Finally listened to this one. Wtf was the supporting press thinking? This is abysmal.

Terrible performers too judging on the couple of yt vids I saw.

I love this album, one of my favorites of the early '00.

I can hear some flashes of quality in there, but honestly I just found this album unmemorable.

wait, which album?

I love the debut. Several excellent chord change, harmonies, and observations.

Yeah this album slams.

(Up The Bracket)