The Libertines are just Dandy

Finally someone in the press gets it. This from The Guardian:

The Libertines rule, OK?

Released five years ago this month, the Libertines' debut album Up the Bracket remains the most influential and important British album since its release. Maybe of the decade, even. It's not the best, but in terms of cultural impact it has yet to be surpassed.

Which is surprising, but not that surprising given that they referenced the better bits of post-war English culture - Peter Ackroyd, Ray Davies, Steptoe and Son, the Buzzcocks - and in doing so, created an over-romanticised vision of a country that never really existed anyway: Albion. Up the Bracket was as a conceptualised jumble, a musical psychogeography of London, from the Caledonian Road across to Whitechapel, New Cross up to Bethnal Green.

Perhaps I need to contextualise this argument by pointing out that a combined poll of the major UK music press best albums of 2000 had the likes of Doves, Coldplay, Dandy Warhols and JJ72 featuring highly: not exactly life-changing bands.

Pivotal albums are about time and place and for all its faults (bad production, crap artwork, half-realised ideas), Up the Bracket offered more than just the music - thankfully, some might say. It also offered a lifestyle and an outlook. From their bog-standard yet suitably self-explanatory name to their good use of accessories (brogues, hats, cravats, gaffer tape) to an unspoken understanding that rock bands were meant to be interesting, preposterous, indulgent and indulged the Libertines injected a new energy into shabby old indie rock...

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Listen to "Death on the Stairs" (Bernard Butler Version):

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Band Wiki]
[Read my (rejected) book proposal for an "Up the Bracket" 33 1/3]