Credit: Found On Internet

It must be great being Carl Barat. To be the darling of the UK indie scene. Not since the height of Britpop has a single British man been so fettered by the great and the good. But does that mean he can turn out a good record?

It’s hard not to hear the shadow of Pete Doherty in many of the tracks, both by his vocal absence and by the fact that he’s clearly the lyrical subject of several of the songs. “Blood Thirsty Bastards” is a particular highlight – like a drunken slur that cuts home in amongst the incoherent ramblings of a lonely drunk, it veers from sneering contempt to pleading understanding.

Without the Tabloid’s pet junkie to a-oh-oh-oh over the chords, Barat gets let loose from the poetry to the rock a bit more, with the Chas’n’Dave punk of You Fucking Love It, or cheery pessimism of album-opener Deadwood. He hasn’t dropped his tradmark effete rock mumbling, nor the ska’d up eye-rolling on tracks like “The Gentry Cove”, but it’s a solid slab of a document as to where popular indie sits in 2007.

It feels like this is the “…and another thing!” moment at the end of the domestic spat that “The Libertines” represented, and not quite a new band moving on. The last signature on the divorce papers on the past, and the first scream of the birthing pains of what’s to come.

7/10