As a teenager growing up in the early 2000s, there were few resources that I trusted as much for my music tastes quite like Spin Magazine. If they had a band grace the cover, there was a good chance that I would give them a listen and feel something. To me it was a stamp of approval that was formative for my tastes, helping me to find so many great artists within those pages. Up until the point where they gave up and went digital, I was there with eager eyes, awaiting the latest opinion pieces and interviews. With that said, I was never able to understand their obsession with The Libertines.
If The Beatles was the cover child for Rolling Stone Magazine, it felt like Spin was a bit TOO obsessed with The Libertines. They were a band that they believed was going to be the biggest thing in the world. If you were anyone, you HAD to listen to “Up the Bracket” and realize that we were entering a new golden age of rock.
That’s how it was sold, and I can’t blame them. The early 2000s was a golden age for garage band revival, bringing intensity and rawness that had been absent for a while. Among their most noteworthy traits was being the bands that brought the “The” back. Leading the pack was The Strokes, who remains arguably the only band from this phenomenon to hold any relevance. Still, my favorite of the groups was The Hives and, if I’m being honest, The Vines deserved more love.
What all of these bands have in common that isn’t true of The Libertines is that they were all staples of American radio, specifically on KROQ 106.7. They may have received airplay, but it wasn’t significant enough for me to be like “Yeah, this band ROCKS!” If anything, The Vines had that reputation for a short bit, even managing to get featured in car commercials. Like The Libertines in The U.K., they would fade despite having one of the most attention-grabbing lead singers of the era.
If I have any relationship with The Libertines, it was Pete Doherty. To me, they were the band that had that crack addict as a singer. It felt like every Spin issue provided an update of his police record and his schedule in rehab. It honestly felt like they were his personal support group, constantly publishing “Get Well Soon” essays in their pages.
This isn’t to say that a drug addict cannot be talented, but it definitely warped my perspective of this so-called “great” band. Considering that their music has failed to even make retrospective hours on KROQ, it’s been difficult to say that they hold any long-term impact in America. It’s the type of aura that makes you think that they weren’t worth all of the attention. They had their moment and then fizzled out in a messy glory.
You can guess why I’ve just never thought about them in the years since, or at least not for more than a few seconds. I’ve thought of less-esteemed bands like The Bravery and The Dead 60s more than The Libertines – and their careers are significantly more underwhelming. And yet, because The Memory Tourist is a place for me to indulge in every impulse, it felt like a good time to finally scratch that itch and figure out what’s so great about this band that I knew so well without hearing a single note. Is Doherty this genius of rock that I have been ignoring for a near-20 years?
My initial impression of “Up the Bracket” can be perfectly described by how I feel about its producer Mick Jones. He was a member of the formative punk band The Clash, whose “London Calling” ranks as one of the few albums I’ve personally loved since middle school. Where most music fades, I’ve been able to listen to “Death or Glory” and not feel embarrassed, like I had actual tastes at the time. To me, they’re just as impressive in the lyrics department as they are with instrumentation. While I can’t say that I have an obsessive quality about the rest of their discography (though, like The Libertines, their debut is pretty great), their high moments stick with you.
When I think of garage bands, I think of something more unpolished. I think of The Hives’ “Veni Vidi Vicius” as a blast of loud energy being blasted through cheap amplifiers as the singer yells, distorting his voice as his throat gives out. I think of someone who has potential but are a few albums away from realizing what that is. I don’t expect their instrumentation to be nuanced or particularly interesting. They’re a garage band. They perform in a garage because they have nowhere else to play.
The Libertines fall somewhere in the middle, and the results are pretty enjoyable. While there is a part of me that’s convinced that Doherty’s reputation overshadows some of the songs lyrically, there is something to admire about how each of the songs is produced. While the lead guitars aren’t always more than riffs, I am fascinated with how The Libertines used the rhythm section. The second guitar is often jerking the melody while the bass is doing something even more sinister. It's clear that this has Jones’ stamp on it because when I listen to these songs, I think of songs like “Career Opportunities” (from “The Clash”) and think of how it has this faux-rockabilly under the punky lead guitar.
To be fair, Jones doesn’t just make The Libertines into Clash Jr., but I wonder if this album would be half as effective if they didn’t have a big-name producer. Would their sound be writing with as much personality as it ends up being? I think that there was something there that drew Jones to them, but I doubt they would’ve realized it right away. Few young bands think to orchestrate a rock song with as much effort as this.
In the lyrics department, they were the familiar dangerous bad boys. All you had to do was look at the title of their songs: “Death on the Stairs,” “Horrorshow,” and “Up the Bracket.” The third song itself is a reference to punching somebody in the throat. Their album cover refers to a riot during the Argentine economic crisis. These are the type of songs that you expect to hear from people who have spent their lives in dive bars, watching the world waste away around them. They’re drunk storytellers, giving a sympathetic subtext to their existence. They may not have a lot in the way of lyrical wit, but they have enough to convey their worlds vividly.
They’re a band that speaks for the underclass, eager to make a difference in the world. When they sing about The Queen, it’s often in scathing and critical ways. She’s out of touch, not knowing what is going on in the streets. As much as it’s a cry to listen, it’s a rallying cry for those who will listen. Suddenly it becomes clear why Jones latched onto them. It comes in passages like in “Time for Heroes” where they sing:
He knows there's fewer more distressing sights than that
Of an Englishman in a baseball cap
And we'll die in the class we were born
But that's a class of our own my love
A class of our own my love
Clocking in at 36 minutes, there is such a focus and intensity to everything that makes every note feel meaningful. What I think made The Libertines such a revered band for their brief window was not anything to do with the controversy of Doherty or his feud with co-singer Carl Barât, but that their music sounded like they were going to be a band on the level of The Clash. Their heart was thrown into every note, and the way that they sometimes slurred words made them more endearing to the raw energy of their sound. With that said, I’m most intrigued by how their instruments are orchestrated. I’m a sucker for a good bass line, and this band uses them as complementary as they come.
I am very curious now to see if their second album is as good as this. Given that Jones is on board, I’m sure that it is. Still, there’s something about me that believes that Doherty’s drug addiction probably is going to hit the band hard sooner than later. I don’t know. Maybe I should jump ahead to their reunion album “Anthems for Doomed Youth” in 2015 when they were on their own. Whatever the case may be, I can understand why they’re given such acclaim as the band that’s going to change the world.
I also understand why they eventually never lived up to the hype. Maybe it was just drug addiction. Or, like Oasis before, their egos got too much in the way and they weren’t even allowed to grow into something more fulfilling. They were just a band playing loud and angry, desiring for their instruments to be tuned a little louder and their lyrics more prominently displayed on the album. I don’t know enough, but I think what makes this band fascinating is how they were the one band that could never live up to the hype. They did their thing very well, but they imploded with two great albums to their credit.
Do I love The Libertines? I think that a big issue with discovering The Libertines in 2020 is that I have to compare my immediate reaction to their sound to a near two decades of listening to The Hives on repeat. I have to think about the band members’ personal lives instead of getting lost in the sound. I’m able to appreciate it, but short of listening to it a dozen more times (which does seem plausible), I can’t say that it leaves a thrilling impression on me. Had I listened in the early 2000s, this story would be different – even slightly.
Though for now, one of the strangest ironies is that they feel like another band that I love a whole lot more. I don’t even know that they’re all that same, but The Libertines feels like a less interesting version of The Arctic Monkeys. It’s in the vocals, the way that their songs have these rambling story structures. Sure, The Arctic Monkeys have more of a contemporary dance floor vibe, but they also have a greater wit that makes them more endearing to me.
I love their 2006 debut “Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not” and think it’s a perfect counterpoint to “Up the Bracket.” Sure The Libertines may be more directly punk and garage band, but The Arctic Monkeys evolved the sound into something more satisfying and rich. It may be coincidental, but the energy is there and Alex Turner does the Doherty shtick better than him.
I choose to believe that I’m reading too much into this, though if it’s true I’m able to appreciate how the band’s impact has secretly been in my life this entire time. Even if I never heard their songs, I’ve heard bands that took their sound and ran with it. That is a successful sign that this band did mean something. They just never quite got to mean it in America outside of people who had niche music tastes.
As another entry in the “The” bands saga, I feel like I’ve discovered a hidden gem. I’m pretty sure that generations since 2005 won’t even know who they are despite being considered one of the most important bands. Are they worthy of rediscovery? I think so. If anything, I find them more sonically interesting than The Strokes. They’re clearly doing something that is more ambitious, and the only thing that stopped them is the tragedies of fame. Would they be bigger if things didn’t go off the rails, or were they doomed to crumble under their own weight and stay a U.K. sensation? I don’t honestly know. I only know about them because of Doherty’s drug addiction. That’s not too encouraging, but I guess it worked out in the end.
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