Back in 2004, you’d have got long odds on The Libertines being a going concern 20 years later. Back then, Britain’s hottest, most dangerous new band had finally imploded after two albums of scuzzy but tuneful indie that was infused with street squalor humour and self-mythologising gutter poetry about a far-gone whimsical version of England. Drugs, betrayal and jail had done for the for the charismatic but combustible Pete Doherty /Carl Barat axis; Doherty seemed certain to become a drugs casualty.
Yet here we in 2024 with the wind in the sails of the good ship Albion. This year’s fourth album All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade , their second since a reformation that has been in various stages of repair since 2010, answered the question of what The Libertines might sound like after 25 years, minus the rancour and the chaos and the smack (Doherty’s now happily married in France, his main vice expensive cheese). For the most part, it turns out to be something altogether more wistful and statelier.
Read Next Jamie xx at Alexandra Palace was a thrilling rave from dance music's great introvert It made the first of three nights in Camden, the culmination of a UK tour, a more unusual Libertines event. It was, as ever, endearingly ramshackle: it took a couple of songs to get going; at times it was rickety, at others thrilling. But across eight new songs, a newer version of the band was emerging.
There were echoes of the past: “Run Run Run”, the most recognisably Libertines.