What more could anyone possibly say about Pete(r) Doherty? As a Libertine he inspired near-Messianic idolatry with as many prison sentences as records and, while all that came with the misplaced fetishisation of the trilby hat, he continued to show his worth as an albeit anarchic songwriter with two Babyshambles releases and a solo record. So it certainly jars when you hear that lately he’s been selling Bobby Gillespie’s fag butts from a rag & bone shop deep in the Camden jungle, proclaiming that to give up crack he’d probably have to “cut his hand off”. It, or rather he, boggles the mind.
And so it is that the listener can only really approach Sequel To The Prequel with cautious intrigue. Lead single ‘Nothing Comes To Nothing’ was certainly a promising if somewhat disconcertingly polished return, moving away from the ramshackle violence of ‘Fuck Forever’ into more La’s-esque territory, despite Doherty’s tumbling vocal delivery. Then comes ‘Fireman’, a track so knowingly screwed up that its position as album opener could only be a deliberate attempt by the band to dispel any rumours that they might have cleaned up just a little bit. The energy is enthralling, but it’s a shame that, after all the plaudits he’s quite rightly received for his lyrical prowess, Doherty still has a tendency to muddy a million words together and delve into a ready-made bag of exhausted rhyme (see “Korea” and “career”).
It’s a niggle made even more frustrating when he delivers a vocal performance that matches ‘For Lovers’ on ‘Farmer’s Daughter’, a pastoral anthem in a similar vein to ‘Albion’. Indeed, it’s almost impossible to believe it’s the same man when he hits that high note. Moving on, the title track is the song only Babyshambles could write, a sort of bar-room sea-shanty that charms with whistling and jazz-cafe guitars, while ‘Penguins’ initially recalls Libertines off-cut ‘Cyclops’, before juxtaposing a love for the flightless bird with a disliking of “your boyfriend’s face”. Anything goes in Babyshambles’ world, so it seems.
‘Seven Shades’ could easily have come from Dirty Pretty Things’ sophomore album Romance At Short Notice, while ‘Doctor No’ is a surprisingly successful ska track with a spaghetti western vibe (possibly the first of its kind), but the real highlight of the second side of this record comes with closer ‘Minefield’. Proving that Babyshambles can do more than thrash out three chord punk numbers, the final track is a brooding affair, seeing us out with sinister bass, whammied up, guttural guitar squalls and a thunderous finale.
Sequel To The Prequel was never going to be as rewarding as the likes of Up The Bracket; the fact is, Doherty just doesn’t command attention in the same magnitude anymore. That the album was apparently pulled from the ashes by bassist Drew McConnell says a lot about Doherty’s waning star. It is, however, a wholly uplifting and ultimately enjoyable record, indicating perhaps that the man who has dominated tabloids for all the darkest reasons over the last decade might, after all, be able to move on to a brighter future.
