In Carol Reid's classic film The Third Man, Orson Welles' slippery anti-hero Harry Lime justifies his descent into crime by comparing the cultural output of Renaissance Italy during the tumultuous rule of the Borgia family to that of Switzerland. The Swiss, he concludes, “had brotherly love and had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” It's a reference the Libertines, with their love of fading Albion, would certainly appreciate, though perhaps not when addressing All quiet on the Eastern Esplanade, their second album after reforming in 2010.
During the Libertines' first run, from 1997 to 2004, the band thrived in dangerous creative chaos, driven by the love/hate relationship between founding members and principal songwriters Carl Barât and Peter Doherty, as well as London buses with hard drugs. While undoubtedly unhealthy—Doherty was famously jailed for breaking into Barât's apartment, and the pair needed bodyguards to keep them apart while recording their second album—this tension produced a compelling, black-and-white debut and a follow-up—over which intermittently blasted his way to the top of the UK charts. According to this stormy story, the band's third album, 2015 is surprisingly vital Hymns for doomed youth, “born of complexity,” according to Barât. This goes away All quiet on the Eastern Esplanade as the first Libertines LP to emerge undisturbed on wax.
For anyone who grew up on the Libertines, it's hard not to tell them apart. And yet the initial signs here are far from promising. “Run Run Run” — the lead single that, ironically, is about trying to escape the past — uses the well-worn line “It's my party and I'll cry if I want to” within the first 30 seconds. Meat-and-potatoes indie rock doesn't take much inspiration from there: The line between a good Libertines song and a bad one remains dangerously thin. “Night of the Hunter” goes a step further, deriving not only its title (from Charles Laughton's 1955 noir masterpiece) but also its central motif, in this case from Tchaikovsky's work. Swan Lake, a borrowing better left unheard. On “Oh Shit,” the Libertines tear themselves apart with a spiraling guitar riff that's almost a carbon copy of their 2003 single “Don't Look Back Into the Sun.”
What are the Libertines without their central tension? Not so different, perhaps, from the Britpop bands that followed them up the charts or the legions of wannabes they inspired in the early 2000s, namely the classic British rock lineage of the Kinks, the Jam and the Smiths. though without the sad beauty, artful fury and naive experimentation of all three. There are moments on this album that speak of a band that once embraced its idiosyncrasies. “Baron's Claw” has a touch of hot jazz in its extended trumpets, while “Be Young”'s foray into reggae is interesting, if not entirely rewarding, helped by the fact that Gary Powell is one of indie's smartest drummers rock.
These points of interest are offset by a series of well-crafted but derivative indie-pop tunes where melodic cleverness meets copybook songwriting. “Songs They Never Play on the Radio” borrows the title of a treasured 1992 biography of Nico and sets it to a depressing, depressing tune, while “Man With the Melody” could be late-period Blur with its shimmering strings , acoustic guitars, and a pretentiously descending, Albarn-esque melody. It is a perfect portrayal of him All quiet on the eastern Esplanadee's central conundrum: The Libertines may have run out of originality, but they can still produce a powerful tune when the muse strikes.
This album is not a Renaissance masterpiece, then. But neither is Harry Lime's cuckoo clock. Stripped of their fraternal bad blood, the Libertines are just a band— and a decent one at that. But like All quiet on the Eastern Esplanade chugs to its chummy ending, you almost wish someone would start mugging someone, if only to see what would happen.
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