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they have a louche charm that sounds like the jackets they wear, (is that synesthetic or just silly?) well anyway the buttons are bold as brass, with off kilter faded piping and it's all rough and ready... and the songs, most of them, are lovely with this demoey feel, mainly from the boxy drum sound but it allows the guitars to chop in and out and the vocal harmonies to interplay and nothing takes over and it it does sort of sound sweet.
but the sweetness belies a complexity to the songwriting, where there's muck maybe there is brass, because they are a bit mucky, but then again, there isn't much literal brass, but maybe i miss the point. there are neat, incisive twists, and melodic cruyff turns. look at, or even listen to, (because it gets a bit boring looking at a shiny cd, even if you can marvel at your own ever so slightly faded reflection) the way boys in the back sneakily unfolds a chorus to die for in a work of crazy musical origami, possibly even with a few reverse folds - i can never do those, but then i find origami cool and bladerunneresque in theory, awkwardly impossible in practice which maybe makes the libertines even better unless i am missing the point. probably. it is similar to the clash in the apparently lazy invective of the singers (and the knob-twiddling of mick jones on desk duty), echoing the peerlessly dead joe strummer and occasionally (is it ok to mention these two in the same sentence? yes, that's low postmodernism for you) blur with their mercifully brief mockney infatuation with all things chasanddave. but the libertines are no chas or dave, perhaps apart from a suspected tendency to hoik fruit from the same east end barrow as mark or martin, especially now martin's a jailbird (i'm your's, your mine, jonogold apples twenny pence a pahnd, i'm your's your mine, ) but i digress, again i think. and it isn't going to set the world on fire but it might kindle a small flicker of flame amongst the coldest of fire-weary cynics, but no, it still ain't promethean. the sound of a wierd man screaming and heralding the start of up the bracket wth its brown paper bag of hooks, melodies and energy, cheap at the price too, might help.and it does have a lyrical charm and depth, it's ever so slightly acerbic, frequently adept and clever, but not clever clever, just clever. and i like it.
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