The Libertines in 2002.
Since I’ve been blathering on about this band for the past few blog posts, I figured I might as well share a few of my favourite songs with you, or at least, as many songs as I could find on Playlist.com. (This is the shitty thing about liking a UK band with relatively little US popularity: YOU CAN NEVER FIND ANYTHING ON THEM. Do you know how many times I’ve tried to convince Verizon they should get “The Good Old Days” as an option for a ringtone?) Music beneath the cut.
My favourite songs are, naturally, nowhere to be found, but this is a decent sampling. The majority are from their second album, which was more commercially successful than their first–therefore the songs are more easily found–but I don’t think it’s as sound as their first. Up The Bracket, released in 2002, is pretty great from the first song to the last (which the glaring exception of “Radio America”). The Libertines (self-titled second album) is less cohesive, but probably contains what I consider their best songs: “Can’t Stand Me Now”, “Music When The Lights Go Out”, and “What Became Of The Likely Lads?”
I was trolling the internet the other day, looking for decent pictures to post that encapsulate the spirit of The Libertines: a Romantic sort of Englishness informed by William Blake and The Boy Biggles*, coupled with a punk attitude and lyrical sweetness, with a dash of Dickensian charm and early Beatles innocence to boot. One can’t really get around the fact that they are British to the utmost, so I wanted to include a picture of them posing with the Union Jack, but unfortunately one or the other (usually Pete) looks like death warmed over. My boys are not terribly photogenic, it seems.
*One of a series of a “boys’ own adventure books” penned in the 1930s about a teenaged RAF pilot and flying ace in World War I, named after the title character, James “Biggles” Bigglesworth. Incidentally, Biggles is also one of Carl’s nicknames.
Anyhow, here it is. Something to listen to if you’re so inclined.
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