Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 08/05/06
Label: Vertigo

It's maybe unfair to characterise Carl Barat as the 'sensible' one from The Libertines. Rather, he was the tough, practical one, the one that could take half-formed ideas and lick them into shape, the one who could drive the band forward when chaos threatened to engulf them. Nor was he just a grafter: widely credited with having been the main songwriter on the inspired "Vertigo", he's also laying claim to "Death on the Stairs" and "I Get Along", to judge from Dirty Pretty Things' live shows.

Ah yes: Dirty Pretty Things. In every respect, "Waterloo to Anywhere" - from its title down - exactly meets your expectations of what Barat's post-Libertines vehicle would sound like. Eschewing finesse, the music is torrid and rumbustious, the spiky guitars and clattering drums overlaid with Barat's familiarly arch, low-toned vocals. Energy levels are high, but - as ever - it's the songs' intellectual content that's most striking. The last few years have left Barat with myriad axes to grind, and grind them he does: "Bang Bang You're Dead" berates an "easily-led" turncoat; "Gin and Milk" amounts to one long howl of betrayal; and the likes of "Doctors and Dealers" and "Bloodthirsty Bastards" take aim at parasitic hangers-on.

Bassist Didz Hammond has said that Carl's intention was to produce an album rooted more in the relative positivity of the first Libertines record than in the darkness of the latter, which - lest we forget - opened with a dramatised argument. Problem is, the punky thrash defining "Waterloo to Anywhere"'s sonic persona jars with the bitter, world-weary tone of the lyrics. Barat may aspire to the exhilarating surge that powered such Libertines classics as "Up the Bracket" and "Boys In The Band", but he seems too heartbroken and jaded to pull it off.

He unquestionably misses having a songwriting foil (or sparring partner). At times, Hammond makes tentative efforts to fill the role, but his reedy, shouted contribution to "You Fucking Love It" proves that he's not quite cut out for it (even if he is relatively easy to share a tour bus with). Watching Dirty Pretty Things live, one senses that Barat isn't particularly comfortable with being the centre of attention, and the reluctant tone heard here on "If You Love A Woman" and "Last Of The Small Time Playboys" would seem to confirm this.

The fear was always that Dirty Pretty Things would resemble The Libertines with a vital ingredient missing, and that's surely what's transpired. In a parallel world, a certain knight in shining armour might swoop in at this point; but in this grotty real world of ours that seems a farcically remote prospect. It's not Carl's fault, of course. It's just a pity how life turns out sometimes.

    by Niall O'Keeffe