Grace/Wastelands

Listeners who aren’t already in sync with Doherty’s wastrel reportage likely won’t be swayed by Grace/Wastelands, but the album generates an atmosphere of fragile, easily disturbed calm bound to captivate those who still find him one of the most compelling figures in modern rock.

Grace/Wastelands isn't quite the defining statement of his genius that his cheerleaders always insisted was just around the corner, but it demolishes the charge that his talent has been fatally squandered. [Apr 2009, p.98]

In a narcotized haze of lounge blues, New Orleans jazz, gauzy retro soul, and understated guitar pop, he has made the most compelling record of his career.

There are tracks here that date back five years, before the tabloids turned up and Pete became Potty. That might account for the album's frankly astonishing surfeit of memorable tunes; it would certainly explain the lack of smirking references to heroin and crack and of the snivelling self-pity that makes junkies such reliably delightful company.

It's the songs--funny, literate, doomed--which get under your skin. [Apr 2009, p.100]

It's an intelligent, beguiling and charming record, from a man who has often seemed to lack all but the first of these qualities, and the first thing he's done since The Libertines' debut to make you feel genuine hope for his future.

Grace/Wastelands is Doherty scrubbed up, older and wiser and showing signs of regret for the past. It is a great album but then, so have they all been.

Grace/Wastelands is a pleasant, downright breezy collection of songs and Doherty, excepting the dreamily ragged quality of his voice, sounds something like a new man.

This is easily the best-sounding album Doherty has been involved with, neither self-consciously "raw" nor overly polished; it lets the music be as simple or as elaborate as it needs to be.

The man's always had his tender side: What makes this album different is the lack of input from his other sides. [May 2009, p.121]

Solo debuts, beginning with 1970's McCartney, generally lay themselves bare. Grace/Wastelands does, with the same irresistible UK melodicism begun by the British Invasion's big bang.

Grace is less a masterpiece than an escape, a memento of his charisma and charm more than a leap towards new horizons.