The Libertines
- The Libertines
- Band Name: The Libertines
- Record Label: Sanctuary
- Release Date: Aug 31, 2004
- Critic Score
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100The Libertines is a record of such raw autobiographical honesty that it carries a weight few others in 2004 can match. [Album of the Month, Sep 2004, p.94]
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Often seems fragile, offhand, tentative, even enervated. But this isn't a weakness--it only makes their sound more their own.
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91A dark, tense record, but one still crackling with life. [Sep 2004, p.114]
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What you have here is the most agonisingly voyeuristic listening experience in rock, ever. It's also some of the most exhilarating and brilliant rock'n'roll of the past 20 years. [7 Aug 2004, p.46]
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90An extraordinary record... It's not, nor is it intended to be, easy listening. [Sep 2004, p.94]
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90This record... is brimming with character, easily surpassing their debut, its energy level like a battery charge. [Sep 2004, p.108]
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One of the most exciting discs in recent memory.
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88Goddamn if the entire mess doesn't sound great. [#12, p.93]
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80This is a fragile, beautiful music, it all nearly falls apart and then flops back together.
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80Some songs are sloppily stretched out and others simply half-finished, but the ample charms of Doherty and Barat are just enough to rescue any of these lows.
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The Libertines is an accurate, sometimes uncomfortable reflection of the band at this point: more scattered and unstable than they were on Up the Bracket, but also more ambitious and more interesting.
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80A step on from Up the Bracket, this album is a winningly idiosyncratic explosion of dizzy pop and punk fury that could yet be honed to perfection.
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80It's basically more of the same sort of wistful, sometimes hard-charging melodic rock of the group's first and better release, Up the Bracket.
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80Raw and emotional.
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The Libertines seems less of an exercise in salesmanship and more a set of lightly buzzed, brightly conversational studies of modern urban nightlife.
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A deeply moving record that is greater than the sum of its individual songs, The Libertines achieves near-tragic grandeur.
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71It's brilliant at points, exhibiting the casual, grimy grace that laced Up the Bracket through English countryside benders, sing-alongs, and pub anthems, but evidently, The Libertines are creatures of excess, and even a good thing can be overdone.
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70Everywhere you look on this record there is a sense of magic escaped, accompanied by the ever-tantalising presence of a great band just beneath the surface.
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The Libertines don’t even try for a good album; they sound like four blokes lucky to be jamming in the same room again, and their joy in each other’s company redeems the enterprise.
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No band in recent history has better captured the vertiginous experience of falling apart and loving it. [16 Sep 2004, p.79]
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70Review #1: Despite the fact that the new album is, yet again, a half-assed effort, The Libertines is nonetheless a thoroughly fascinating one to hear. [score=60]; Review #2: There is not a weak moment on this album. [score=80]
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Some of these songs are excellent, in an unfinished but inspired way. But many of the album's tracks evidence a band that's bursting at the seams with talent, only to stumble on unfocused, scattershot song-writing.
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The results are as ebullient as they are confessional.
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67The album quickly unravels into a mess of mumbled vocals, pointless guitar solos and songs that sound suspiciously unfinished.
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60A thrilling, frustrating souvenir of a band whirling out of control. [Sep 2004, p.130]
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Like the Strokes on their own sophomore effort, the Libs thoroughly disappoint on this follow-up. [24 Sep 2004, p.106]
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The Libertines just don't live up to the hype. [Jan 2005, p.113]
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From the very start, The Libertines is the sound of the band at its most muzzled; paralysed by poor production, underdeveloped songs and private lives that have become more sensational and noteworthy than the music.