The Libertines 'Anthems For Doomed Youth' album review

Image: The Libertines 

Almost 12 years on from their last album, you’d have been forgiven for thinking that the ship to Albion had indeed passed. However, the band's third studio effort is more than just a tribute to their former glory. 

As the band announced the new album back in December, front man Pete Doherty commented on the revival of The Libertines, stating, "It was a row that took 10 years to get over. Also, I stopped taking heroin all day, every day." 

The rehabilitation of the enigmatic Doherty is in fact the driving force for the album. Fellow founder Carl Barat joined Pete in the Hope Rehab Centre, Thailand, offering support for his oldest friend and fellow ‘Pigman’ as he battled his publicised struggles with substance abuse. 

However, the first track off the album, ‘Barbarians’ instantly washes away any lingering uncertainty of what you’re about to hear. The Jam like chorus and quintessentially Libertines guitar riff offers an instant classic and future staple in their live gigs. 

Whilst Pete and Carl used to share lyrics about their love torn relationship, putting their dirty laundry out for all to see, lyrics like "I don’t know if I can go on, making no sense in song" on ‘Belly of the Beast’ show signs that The Libertines are back with a new sense of ambition.

The already festival hardened ‘Gunga Din’ offers a mash up of reggae and ska that Pete has delved into before with the Babyshambles, where he documents his troubled past with "Got to find a vein, always the same."  

At first, ‘Heart of the Matter’ sounds like a song that didn’t quite make the cut for Pete’s last Babyshambles record Sequel to the Prequel.

However, the autobiographical line "With all the battering its taken, I’m surprised it’s still ticking" coupled with a chorus that's up there with the best they've written makes it arguably the best song on the album. 

The band sound re-energised, ready to make up for lost time, and there’s a lot of time to be made up for. It doesn’t sound like they’re going through the motions and flogging the same once so successful horse that saw them become the nations favourite indie sweethearts. 

Only one song from the bands apparently ‘good old days’ makes it onto the record. It’s one fans, who spent their early teenage years scrawling through endless fan forums for unreleased demos, have been familiar with for donkeys, ‘You’re my Waterloo’.

Pete’s opening lyric "You’ll never fumigate the demons" has never felt so relevant. It’s almost an admittance that the problems they have had have left their mark.

Title track Anthem for Doomed Youth lends from another slower band classic ‘Music When the Lights Go Out’, offering solace with Carl’s reassuringly positive "Life can be so handsome, it’s all gonna be ok." 

Drafting in Jake Gosling, a producer behind hit albums for Ed Sheeran and One Direction seemed like an odd choice. However the risk has well and truly paid off as he’s managed to offer a sense of clarity not present on their previous albums. 

His influence is evident throughout the album and is particularly prevalent on ‘Iceman’. The songs starts with the sound of waves crashing against a Thailand beach; the measured stripped back nature of the song evokes feelings of what Pete and Carl’s writing sessions sounded like. Intimate, laid back with a sense of tranquillity.

As the song builds up, the lyric "Don’t spend your days in the haze with the iceman" becomes more and more poignant acting as an admittance that a lifestyle of heroin and cocaine, which often made them tabloid fodder, has to come to an end. 

‘The Milkman’s Horse’ and ‘Dead For Love’ follow in the same vein offering a time for reconciliation, whilst ‘Glasgow Coma Scale Blues’ and ‘Fury of Chonburi’, a regular vice den for the band during their time in Thailand, shows them off again at their cigarette smoking best.

The swashbuckling punky guitars may be a thing of the past, but their song writing ability is as prolific as ever. It was a risk releasing an album which ventures away from what they are known and loved for, but they could be entering a calmer, matured chapter of their once volatile existence, if they want it that is. 

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