When a musician has storied tribulations with drug addictions, it seems evident that he’s producing something that’s sufficiently visceral and gut-wrenching: the true soul ravaging activity of flipping the consciousness inside out and dealing with the consequences.
In that respect, singer Pete Doherty of British band Babyshambles would be the consummate rock star. The Internet is rife with the iconoclastic drugged up Doherty pictures, bottle of liquor in hand, sunken and darkened eyes, cigarette in mouth and an aloofly strewn countenance.
So maybe his music is a coping mechanism, which would explain Babyshambles’ largely giddy and uplifting sound. The music is Doherty’s avenue to quell his troubled life, stricken by an on-and-off relationship with supermodel Kate Moss, and the drugs sought to artificially silence the sorrow.
In any case, Babyshambles’ new record Shotter’s Nation maintains the same sound that has led people to hail every Pete Doherty outfit as authentic rock. It’s the talent, the originality and, above all, the honest presentation afforded by the liquor-laden sound. The record is full of lazy chirping, treble notes and Doherty’s voice that seems constantly oppressed by a sort of gravitational counterforce. Maybe it’s because he is perpetually drunk. But it doesn’t matter because his vocals on Shotter’s Nation are excellent as expected, having the same unique and natural spot-on laziness that Julian Casablancas from the Strokes has as well.
The intro in their first single, “Delivery,” boasts the catchiest riff out of the whole record, containing a descending arpeggio followed and compounded by a corresponding stomp of power chords. It’s the kind of song you want to hear as you’re walking down State Street before class as the song’s spunky attitude infiltrates the whole body until you can’t help but walk with the rhythm.
“You Talk” features the same swingy and bouncy cadence that was the lifeline of Doherty’s former band, the Libertines. The guitars are buoyant, a straight consequence of the guitarist’s fingers and the soul of the guitar. Like the rest of the record, it’s completely untainted by overzealous studio modifications.
It must be said, however, that it’s difficult to listen to this record objectively and to not automatically perceive it as perfect. The press has created a character who precedes the music, a character of Doherty as the tortured and addiction-addled genius. But if you look hard enough you will also find some duds on the record. Babyshambles’ sound is marked by its familiar bouncy and spunky Euro-pop energy, though that turns some of the songs, like “French Dog Blues,” into ambiguities. They’re just too typical, so they don’t evocatively sear the soul as you’d want them to. However, there are too many gleaming moments of brilliance for Shotter’s Nation to be written off as a product that’s past Doherty’s creative prime — he is clearly in the thick of it right now.
The end of “Unstookie Titled” is a dirty diamond that is slowly polished, round after round through the rhythm. The song dwindles in a fashion very reminiscent of autumn, filled with warm tones of crisp acoustic inclusions and the kind of deep revelries that are otherwise only inspired by a dreamy gaze at golden leaves falling to the ground. The band definitely released this record during the right season.
Similarly, if you’ve ever been in the law library, gazing out the wall of glass looking onto Bascom Hill during the fall, you might get an appreciation for the gentle yet rousing subtleties in “Lost Art of Murder.” The lyrics are Doherty through and through, with personal pictures described in words and nostalgia on something that was more of a lesson than an ugly tattoo from his past. “Get up off your back, stop smoking” — coy pause — “that,” he sings. It’s this penchant for art and beauty that exceeds Doherty’s penchant for drugs.
Doherty may be in and out of jail and rehabilitation centers on a frequent basis, but the fact is that music is his livelihood. His rollercoaster rock-star life is not irrelevant. It serves as the weft to the woof. It completes the fabric of what he’s doing, and what Doherty is doing is sweatily and madly spinning through life and sopping up inspiration. The outcome is a giant spectrum of emotion and rousing experience that exists within Shotter’s Nation. And in true Doherty fashion, nothing — not even emotion — is spared.
