****Pete(r) Doherty the artist has been with us for some time now. Since 2002 he's accounted for a body of work consisting of two Libertines albums and two Babyshambles albums plus an EP.
2009 brings us his first solo release which amounts to a total of 5 albums and an EP in 7 years - not bad by todays standards and contrary to the oft portrayed wastrel image that the tabloids are so overly keen to cultivate.
'Grace/Wastelands' sees Doherty reunited with 'Shotters Nation' producer Stephen Street, widely credited for being the first to coherently produce this ramshackle group of tearaways, he knocks previous knob twiddler, 'deaf' Mick Jones', efforts into a cocked hat.
Again here, it appears Street has tamed the beast and, along with Blur guitarist Graham Coxon, skillfully steered the good ship Albion away from the perilous rocks. Many of these songs have been around in one form or another for some time but, whereas I chastised Morrissey for including pre-released material on his latest album, at least here we are treated to the full realisation of previously scratchy, slip shod outakes, as intimate and charming as they were. Coxon's understated guitar work and Street's ephereal production allow the melody and the poetry of Doherty's songs to shine through perhaps like never before.
'Arcady' begins by skipping jauntily through a beat poet lyric and lead single 'Last of the English Roses', although repeating overplayed sentiments, includes some crafty lines as in the couplet, "Oh in '93/She could charm the bees knees of the bee."
'1939 Returning', benefits greatly from this haunting ambience as "urchins grey with dust" peer out at us from wartime memories of an ageing ex-evacuee. Doherty still has the ability to gleen beauty from the commonplace and tragic. To compare his voice to Morrissey, as one critic has, is tantamount to blasphemy but it's true that his aching lilt seems to have found a new delicacy here. Perhaps nowhere more so than on 'A Little Death Around the Eyes', possibly the oldest song included but breathed new life into in its current conception.
There are moments when you feel things may go a little ary, as when Pete personifies the elements on 'I'm the Rain' or presents us 'Sweet By and By', which never fails to evoke an image of Pete the lounge lizard, swaggering through a smoky jazz club. These hiccups negotiated, we are then treated to 'Broken Love Song' and 'New Love Grows on Trees' the latter disappointingly not included on 'Shotters Nation' after it emerged from the 'Stookie and Jim - Bumfest' session of demos.
This isn't the glorious magnum opus that everyone unrealistically craves (Doherty's never put his name to anything flawless yet) but it is a joyous and infectious listen and, just perhaps, his most realised work since those halcyon Libertines days, ironically when most of this material was written. You do wonder therefore, how much longer he can plunder the past for glories. In the meantime, 'Grace/Wastelands' is a welcome and refreshing display of the errant troubadours undoubted talents.
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