Down in Albion

Remember five years ago and that heady rush of distortion of myriad garage bands with monosyllabic names—each the “Next Big Thing” according to NME—flooding the music scene? Remember how the Libertines, fronted by Pete Doherty, set themselves apart from the Strokes and the Vines and the Hives with an exquisite sense of rock history, harmonic sophistication, and fantastically nihilistic lyrics? Remember how both the Libertines’ albums—first “Up the Bracket” and then their eponymous “The Libertines”—offered Americans a raw, exciting view into a drug-addled cockney underground where Sid Vicious still swaggered?

If you do, you better not to listen to Babyshambles’ “Down In Albion.”

It’s not that it’s a terrible album. It’s more that every song from Doherty’s new band sounds like a half-hearted Libertines imitation, a painful attempt to revisit the successful past.

Doherty himself has fallen fast and far since the implosion of his last band. The drug problems that led to the erratic touring schedule and apocalyptic lyrics of the Libertines have since spiraled out of control. Doherty is in and out of both jail and the UK tabloids, which have rabidly followed his coke-fueled relationship with arrested supermodel Kate Moss.

On “Down In Albion,” Doherty sounds like a husk of his former self. The voice that once rivaled the Strokes’ Julian Casablancas for sinuous suggestiveness now comes off as tired and stripped of all attitude. Many of the songs feel rushed and sloppy, and it’s easy to get the sense that the band needed a bit more rehearsal before entering the recording studio.

Nonetheless, Doherty and company managed to lay down some genuinely decent tracks. The single “Fuck Forever” is great stadium rock, although it feels more Oasis than Libertines. Standout track “A’rebours” recalls the shimmery stop-and-go pop of the Zombies. “Albion,” is the album’s high point, an elegiac tribute to working-class Britain.

But these can’t save “Down In Albion” from its share of duds. “Back From The Dead” is so boring that it feels as though it never lived in the first place. Kate Moss’ cutesy cameo on “La Belle et la Bête” starts the album off on a shaky, self-indulgent note. And both the slack ska of “Sticks and Stones” and the bizarre pseudo-Reggaeton of “Pentonville” sound horrendously out of place.

As the record progresses, the “shamble” of the group’s name makes more sense. The album becomes slower and more listless towards its eventual end. The listener’s mind wanders and wonders whether Pete Doherty will ever escape the shambles he’s made of his own life.

On “Fuck Forever,” he sings that, “Happy endings, they never bored me.” But in an album that contains the word “death” in nearly every song, the sentiment sounds hollow. Listeners anxious for Doherty to recapture the verve he displayed with the Libertines will have to wait a little while longer.

In the mean time, there’s always the next “Next Big Thing.” Arctic Monkeys, anyone?