- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
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.
-
It'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.
-
UncutThe 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]
-
PopMattersReview #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]
-
MojoAn extraordinary record... It's not, nor is it intended to be, easy listening. [Sep 2004, p.94]
-
Q MagazineThis record... is brimming with character, easily surpassing their debut, its energy level like a battery charge. [Sep 2004, p.108]
-
New Musical Express (NME)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]
-
Rolling StoneNo band in recent history has better captured the vertiginous experience of falling apart and loving it. [16 Sep 2004, p.79]
-
A 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.
-
The Libertines seems less of an exercise in salesmanship and more a set of lightly buzzed, brightly conversational studies of modern urban nightlife.
-
SpinA dark, tense record, but one still crackling with life. [Sep 2004, p.114]
-
The results are as ebullient as they are confessional.
-
FilterGoddamn if the entire mess doesn't sound great. [#12, p.93]
-
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.
-
Raw and emotional.
-
Everywhere 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.
-
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.
-
This is a fragile, beautiful music, it all nearly falls apart and then flops back together.
-
The album quickly unravels into a mess of mumbled vocals, pointless guitar solos and songs that sound suspiciously unfinished.
-
One of the most exciting discs in recent memory.
-
It'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.
-
Some 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.
-
Often seems fragile, offhand, tentative, even enervated. But this isn't a weakness--it only makes their sound more their own.
-
A deeply moving record that is greater than the sum of its individual songs, The Libertines achieves near-tragic grandeur.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 96 out of 108
-
Mixed: 5 out of 108
-
Negative: 7 out of 108
-
Dec 27, 2010
-
Mar 23, 2012
-
Mar 23, 2012