If you ask us, there’s nothing that screams London more than The Libertines.
Sure, when you mention our nation’s fair capital, there exists a sizeable chunk of people whose minds immediately conjure images of history and its homes: Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, and Big Ben, to name a few. For others, their first thoughts of the former Londonium are those of its tourist traps and Time Out favourites – the M&M Worlds, Leicester Squares, and Westfields, amongst other places that this fair writer would rather gauge his eyes out with a rusty spoon than go anywhere near on even the most pensive of Saturday afternoons.
And some people, in all likelihood, probably just think ‘that city’s just not for me’. Which is, at times, understandable.
But, in our eyes there exists nothing more British than the sight of four scrappy rockers, together again after more than a lifetime’s worth of trials and tribulations, standing on a stage in Camden and rattling through some of the finest, most poetic indie-rock music this land has ever produced.
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And on a nippy Halloween night at the Roundhouse, that’s exactly what The Libertines did.
In many ways, it’s less of a gig and more of a celebraton. There’s a sense of ‘how are they still here?’ – a bulldog spirit, and never say die attitude, that started as a personality quirk for Barat, Doherty and co., but soon became a necessity. There’s the camaraderie between the two leading men; even after twenty years (and a slew of high-profile, urm, ‘disagreements’), it’s still the closest thing that British indie culture has to a never-ending love story.
And then, of course, there’s the music.
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To label the songs of The Libertines ‘indie staples’ just isn’t doing them justice.
They’re slices of suburban poetry, with Coleridgian lyrics nestling neatly between layers of snarling guitars, chirpy riffs, and a state-of-mind melodic delivery that John Cooper Clarke himself would be proud of.
And as collections of songs go, we’d be loathe to find a stronger set than The Libertines aired that night in London. What A Waster, Can’t Stand Me Now, Shiver, Run Run Run, and Time For Heroes were all aired with the same vim and vigour as they were first performed two-and-a-bit decades ago. By the time the band rounded off their encore with the inevitable, invincible, and incredible melodic right-hook that is Don’t Look Back Into The Sun,
What became of the likely lads, you may ask? Well, they’re still here, and arguably better than they’ve ever been. So, long live The Libertines – the last bastions, legendary leaders, and poet laureates, of British indie-rock’n’roll.
