Peter Doherty: Felt Better Alive review — charming poetry and silliness
Two decades of wild living, often played out for the fascination of the tabloids, have done their work on 46-year-old Pete (now Peter) Doherty. The co-leader of the Libertines, the band that for much of the Noughties found the missing link between the Clash and Chas & Dave, revealed earlier this year that if he doesn't do something about his rich diet, excessive boozing and cigarette habit, his toes will have to be amputated. This horrific scenario comes after Doherty finally managed to quit heroin, leaving behind the carousing of years past with Kate Moss and the like for a quiet life in Normandy with his wife, Katia, and their toddler daughter. Now comes an album that sounds like a visit to the last chance saloon, a final throw of the dice, an attempt to get his life back on track before it is all too late. And it is delivered with the mix of insouciance, resignation, poetry and silliness that has always been at the heart of Doherty's charm.
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'I tiptoed around gravestones digging up old songs, felt better, oh my,' he sings over a haunted fairground rhythm on Felt Better Alive, one of a handful of songs in which Doherty addresses his life's calling as a salvation from himself. With its elegant strings and bright melody, Pot of Gold starts out as a seemingly innocent lullaby to his daughter, before Doherty reveals more venal intentions. 'If that lullaby is a hit, dad can buy you loads of cool shit,' he sings, also suggesting that if his child is silent for a few moments more, he can write 'the kind of thing they pay millions for'. Rarely has such naked intention been laid out so barely in lyrical form.
You wouldn't think Doherty, being a beloved indie rock singer of ill repute, should be worrying about money, but it turns out that all those years of addiction, which included three spells in jail, did not lead to the most prudent investment choices. 'I'm in serious financial shtuck,' Doherty told The Times last year, before revealing that he was facing a £200,000 tax bill, a black hole of debt for the Libertines' residential Margate studio the Albion Rooms, and three grand a month in child support for two older children from previous relationships. 'Why do you think I'm doing this tour?' he elaborated. Doherty is equally honest about his motivations on this album, while infusing it with a romantic sensibility that stops things from getting unpleasantly transactional.
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Prêtre de la Mer and Stade Océan, eulogies to Doherty's local priest and Normandy's football stadium respectively, take inspiration from his adopted country and have a rollicking Gallic quality, equal parts maudlin and celebratory. Sometimes Doherty's attempts to write his way out of trouble reek of desperation — Fingee is a bit of nonsense poetry about not much at all — but in the main there is ragged appeal, as Doherty has matured from public enemy No 1 to an ageing roué. It's a role that suits him. (Strap Originals)★★★★☆
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