Head-land

You never wanted
to be the type
to be immobilised.

Now they ask you
why you always
seem to let
yourself wash away.

I think, like me,
you find it hard
to hear the sea
keep knocking
so you let it in.
You know that, while it's great,
to say
"I will be strong"
you know you're only there
to be engulfed
so why
not play along?

You know that you're supposed to hate
that sensation of letting yourself rot
but
there's something so sexy
about being stripped
to the bone.
Something so thrilling
about self-destruction
as you tumble down
bit by bit.

I think the world was never made
with us in mind
so, still, we sit.
And gorge ourselves on vertigo
and tumble down
bit by bit.

empty

empty

Running

I knew from the start you were running.
You’ve got those runner’s eyes
that say “I’m here
now, but in my mind
I’m far away.”

Too far away to face
that paperwork that you know
was due in yesterday, but
you didn’t get round to.
"Gravity," you think.
"Anything that ties me down
isn’t worth staying still for.”

You told me “it’s a shame
the world is round, because
everything always catches up.”
I knew that running was
your nature not by choice
but because you’d not yet learned
to float away.

I knew, as I’m a runner too.
I was stretching at the table 
just in case you reached out
and tried to grab a hold.
I wondered where you were
as we snacked on our hors d’oeuvres:

Probably back at home
watching TV and forgetting
that awful date you just went on.

It’s hard to feel free
when everything catches up
eventually. I hope that
you’re still running.
Accountable to nothing
but the wind in your face
as you sweat off each droplet
of responsibility.

I think that we’re perfect for each other:
let’s stay away forever.
I’ll run one way
and you the other
that way
we’ll never catch up.

Insufficiently shambolic.

Sequel to the Prequel
by Babyshambles
(Parlophone, 2013)

I don’t like British indie rock. I resent the cacophony of the leaden guitar playing, the pick vituperatively assaulting the strings as if the indie’ers haven’t worked out that amplifiers are actually rather useful for, well, amplifying one’s playing. More so than the sans funk unconscious imitation of chicken-scratch rhythm guitar, I loathe consummately prosaic Brit-Rock hacks like Alex Turner who believe you should write only about what you know, as opposed to what you feel . Pete Doherty, however, is an exception; iconoclastic enough as a performer, a writer and – of late – a Parisian bohemian expatriate to still hold a certain superiority over the multitude of groups spawned in The Libertines’ wake who are, at best, as “this’ll do” adequately uninspiring as Beady Eye. Sequel to the Prequel is his first album in four years and its perfunctory sensibility suggests that, although Doherty is certainly a functioning addict, the joys implied by Babyshambles’ rollicking music might even be actualised were their centric singer-songwriter slightly more than just functioning.

At this stage, what can be said about Doherty’s heroin addiction that doesn't lend succour to the tabloid press’ relentless and sadistic campaign to make everyone forget that he’s, at least in essence, a musician? I would love to – as with his fantastic 2009 solo album Grace/Wastelands – be able to use Sequel to the Prequel as a riposte to these facile voyeurs, but it feels as superficial a manifestation of the familiar Doherty persona as a late-period Rolling Stones record. “Rollicking” was an adjective I used in the previous paragraph to describe the joie de vivre-imbued Babyshambles sound, and what music is more rollicking than freshly electric Bob Dylan, circa 1965? Doherty seems to agree with me, as he plagiarises passages of I Want You and Maggie’s Farm in a couple of the record’s uniformly derivative melodies.

Doherty has made a trade of haphazardness, but whilst Babyshambles’ début Down in Albion was charmingly strung-out – its evident seams lending it an enjoyable quality of spontaneity – the relatively polished production of Sequel to the Prequel bears the feel of an effort to dress the artist’s latest set of ramblings up as “proper” songs, this newly-found sartorial elegance a futile and distracting embellishment. Again and again Doherty, who seems better suited to a solo career as a sort of scattershot troubadour, resorts to the same old bag of melodic tricks; a pinch of Waterloo Sunset here, an almost wholesale borrowing of the chorus from Where Angels Play by the Stone Roses there; “there” being on the LP’s true nadir, Maybelline, a tedious amalgam of the usual thrashed riffs and ubiquitous major-to-minor chord changes. Picture Me in a Hospital does not deviate much from these over-prevalent re-treads of his earlier music, but heart-on-sleeve lyrics and, atypically, a violin (substituting for the jangly guitars one expects to propel its riff) serve to elevate it beyond said functionality.

This is because, like any formula, the Doherty songwriting blueprint occasionally works, with the eponymous track a touching Music Hall bit of frivolity that is all Doherty. Dr No is altogether less archetypal, a slice of dark reggae concerning the purchase of some drugs that suggests that – in a shocking turn of events – perhaps Alex Turner is right, I'm wrong, and it is better to write about what you know. Whilst these highlights are certainly vital and thrilling – and the record does get better as it progresses – Sequel to the Prequel is the most disappointing record its focal point has made to date. It’s not embarrassingly smacked-out, nor is it pathetically polished and mainstream-adulating, but the middle-ground on which it firmly places itself renders it an uninspiring addition to the canon of an artist who knows better, and is – surely – capable of being the purveyor of honest and incandescent rock music he’s always promised to be, and has, on occasion, shown himself to be.