Ok, so perhaps I'm not much of an impulsive guy. I'm pretty rational, I think things through, and am not usually prone to making hasty judgements. Nor am I suseptible to giving an album a perfect score after only owning it for a month. But let's think for a moment about the word "ownership" here. "Up The Bracket" owns ME at the moment. I have no say as to when it will pop itself into my c.d. player and lambast me with its drunken, sloppy, Kinks/Buzzcocks-style kickers. I write this review high above the U.S. on a plane from San Francisco to Philly and fittingly, have recently read many reviews of this album both in the U.S. and Canada from coast to coast, most of which have been average to suspicious, and usually contained the words "Strokes" and "imitation".
Let me say this right now: I am not the biggest Strokes fan. I respect their Television/Richard Hell NYC influences, and would not turn off "Last Night" if I came across it on the radio, but you know, fuck them anyway and fuck all the critics who creamed themselves over the very mediocre "Is This It".
The Strokes to me have all the right clothes, the right contrived attitudes in their East Village pissholes, but it stops there. Julian Casablancas couldn't write a proper song if it crawled up his arsehole. Perhaps my Strokes bile will subside once their second album comes out, and perhaps I'll even like it, but that rant was really directed at the U.S. and Canadian reviewers who compared the mighty Libertines to the Strokes in every recent review of "Up The Bracket".
I first heard about the Libertines upon reading Adrian Denning's review on his stellar site. Adrian is really my UK consultant for all good UK music because I really trust his opinion. To use hommie lingo...Adrian keeps it REAL. Anyway, from what I read, all the right ingredients were there for an album that I would probably like. The Buzzcocks, Jam and Clash are all of my musical heroes so I downloaded a couple of Libertines tracks, liked what I heard, and waited patiently for the album to come out in Canada. God forbid that any Canuck radio station should play them when right now they're too busy pushing Shania "up up up".
So on to the album itself. Spastic would be a good way to describe the first three tracks. After subsequent listens, I would venture to say that what producer (and former Clash hero) Mick Jones did was select the most spirited and spontaneous takes without sacrificing the band's penchant for melody, because these songs are very delicately contructed underneath their rough and boozed up exteriors.
"Vertigo" kicks off with a skanking intro, breaks off into an irresitably jumpy bassline, and shifts gears for a wicked melody as the singer does his "walking under ladders" lyric. "Death On The Stairs" continues the jumpiness, and one can tell that these Brits not only know their way around old Paul Weller melodies but can swing like old Motown....well maybe not as polished as old Motown...actually, imagine if Motown's funk brothers were drunk and British and then you've got the Libertines. A dry sense of humour is also apparent on several tracks such as the lyrics "oh baby please kill me, oh don't kill me, just don't bang on about yesterday..." Morissey could have penned that line. And speaking of Morrissey, I'm not sure if I'm the only one who notices a Smiths influence on the track "What A Waster", which perhaps not by accident was produced by Bernard Butler, formerly of Smiths lovers Suede. A profanity laced number which probably secured the parental advisory warning on the disc, "Waster" speaks of a cocaine sniffing "divy", which I'm told is Brit slang for a "dumbass". "Boys In The Band" has a skanking tempo change and out of tune guitar riff. It's pure new wave heaven for the new millenium.
Now just before you get sick of my name dropping, I must say that the spirit of the Pixies lives on in "The Boy Looked At Johnny", in which the singer's retarded sounding vocals recall Black Francis' early retarded screaming fits on early Pixies records. The Libertines also have the Pixies style knack for hyper three chord multi-layered raunch distortion songs such as "I Get Along". On that particular song he sings "I get along...people tell me I'm wrong *pause* Fuck 'em!!" He says the last expletative so casually that one cannot help but laugh and think, this isn't angry punk, it's blase, booze rock that swings.
So dudes...buy this album...trust yer uncle Neal on this one. It's fine rock and roll that would make Ray Davies proud. Even if this is the only record the Libertines ever release, "Up The Bracket" is one winning glory shot that's enough for me. It's the best record I've heard in ages after being hit on the head with the Hives, Vines, White Stripes etc, and all the other bands that NME writers will advise you to buy.
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