‘Maybe I’m just warped, you know?’ Peter Doherty is in a self-analytical mood, though his latest epiphany comes as no surprise to most of us. Once celebrated as co-founder of The Libertines, the majority of Doherty’s work has been overshadowed by a life in the gutters of celebrity. A spokesman for his generation? The pallid face of junkie-chic, more like. Not that it’s been particularly glamorous. Despite becoming one of the UK’s most recognised faces, Doherty will look back on his twenties as a difficult time.
For those who’ve spent the last seven years under a brick, here’s a little recap. In the late ’90s, Doherty passed the time filling graves for a living, before forming a rock band with his sister’s friend, Carl Barât. The Libertines languished a little, before recording era-defining debut album Up The Bracket. Several tours and myriad drug problems later, Doherty burgled Barât’s flat, allegedly raising money for ‘medicine’. Unsurprisingly, he served a stretch at Her Majesty’s pleasure for this – the first of several. And yet, The Libertines stumbled onwards, though Doherty’s drug difficulties eventually forced Barât’s hand, and the band finished up a year or so later without him.
Babyshambles followed: a promising outfit marred by Peter’s condition and reputation, as well as his off-on relationship with Kate Moss, which stretched across tabloid pages between January 2005 and April 2007. In the months following, Doherty’s headline presence receded slightly, possibly because his friend Amy Winehouse had an opiate-laced star in the ascendancy.
The singer releases his debut solo album, Grace/Wastelands, four days after his 30th birthday. For a man who has always enjoyed the camaraderie of a band setup, going solo so late in life is an intriguing experience. ‘I’m really curious to find out what people honestly think, particularly the critics,’ he says. ‘In a way, you can kind of bank on certain people’s opinions, you know? You know that if someone’s into you then they’re into you, whereas critics are gonna look at it less subjectively and pick holes, if you like. That’s what I’m waiting for really.’
If critics are expecting the usual Doherty noise-fest, they’re in for quite a surprise. The album was sewn together by legendary British producer Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur), a man known for his cohesive Britpop sound, somewhat at odds with the familiar Doherty chaos. And, in the tradition of British greats such as Bowie or Albarn, the singer is showing chameleon-like promise. The lead single, ‘The Last Of The English Roses’, is several galaxies away from anything Babyshambles might come up with, drawing Gorillaz comparisons from all who hear it, while ‘Through The Looking Glass’ is a fantastic romp through Kinksy nostalgia, shone through a mid-’90s prism.
It was unlikely to be any other way. On guitars and studio nous is guitarist’s guitarist Graham Coxon, presumably taking time out from Blur rehearsals (they reform this summer). ‘He was probably in the studio more than I was,’ smiles Doherty. ‘I remember when I was about 15 and still listened to Pet Shop Boys and Chas And Dave. Some lad at school who was a bit of a mod lent me a Blur tape and it had on it a song called “Bank Holiday”. I was like, “What’s this?” I said to him, “I liked that tape but that one song, it’s a bit fast.” And he said, “Yeah, it’s punk. It depends what mood you’re in.” And then something sort of clicked in me. I’ve always liked Coxon. I don’t know why.’
What’s not to like? Coxon’s presence is almost an assurance of quality, likely to win Doherty new fans. As Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood once said, ‘Anything that has more of Graham’s guitar playing, I’m bound to like.’
Something of a serial collaborator, Doherty also brings aboard Dot Allison, a Scottish chanteuse that he has been performing with intermittently since 2004. Allison’s fragile voice complements Doherty’s wonderfully, bringing something to the live favourite ‘Sheepskin Tearaway’ that Peter has struggled to find in the studio for some time. In Allison, he finds the ideal partner; comparisons with Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris would be appropriate on several levels, though that might be tempting fate.
Ultimately, Grace/Wastelands is a tight collection that says a lot for Doherty as a maturing writer. Sure, the unending, tiresome search for old Albion continues (‘Arcadie’), but it comes with a Dylan-esque world-weariness appropriate to his advancing years. Elsewhere, much will be made of the lyrical candour that runs through the album, although this should no longer come as a surprise.
From the good ol’ days of ‘Horrorshow’ and ‘Can’t Stand Me Now’, Doherty has excelled at honesty – not something you might associate readily with the junkie community. Amid the self-mythologising sixth-form poetry, there are occasionally lines that shock you to the core, invariably because anyone who has picked up a newspaper in the last decade will know them to be true.
Grace/Wastelands is available from www.7digital.com
