Austinist CD Review: Babyshambles - Shotter's Nation
The going line for Babyshambles reviews seems to be: “Just ignore the tabloid stuff, the music is good.” What? Why? Half the punch of Down in Albion, Babyshambles’ debut, was the voyeurism and the subtext. To Have Or Have Not isn’t really Howard Hawks’ best, but we watch it because Bogart and Bacall are falling in love in front of our eyes. Pete Doherty was deteriorating on Albion, a Polaroid of the tabloids’ teetering man-child. The rest of the band seemed to exist solely to rein him in, and at its peak, the tension matched Doherty’s claustrophobic, manic inner dialogue, which we always think of fondly when watching that part in Goodfellas where Ray Liotta is trying to lose the helicopter that’s tailing him.
The opposite is true for Shotter’s Nation – there’s a forced orderliness to everything. Doherty doesn’t mark up the margins or writhe beneath the 4/4; he politely knocks before he enters each track. Then the band lumps all sorts of footnotes and interpolations into the songs and it all sounds too smart and witty, not haphazardly ingenious like the whistle-to-full-band crescendo on Albion’s “Sticks and Stones.”
It’s hard to fault a guy, though, for not being as shithoused as usual, which is certainly the assumption here, since Doherty seems very incapable of acting sober when he’s not and vice versa. An album’s an album, but if we’re looking at this as Albion in handcuffs and changing our expectations accordingly, Shotter’s is regularly superb. In fact, most everyone but this reviewer felt personally offended by how slipshod Albion sounded, so if you’re in that camp, Shotter’s is far superior.
Either way, the increased restraint does prove ideal at times. “UnstookieTitled” is the most rewarding track on the album, largely because of its very uncharacteristic balance; though a bit “Lyla Garrity I love you” for a Babyshambles record, Mick Whitnall’s lulling guitar theme is pristine as any you’ll find, and Doherty is cognizant enough to let it breathe. His lyrics also seem more thoroughly scrutinized than on Albion, though not to the point of contrivance – he’s just more often thoughtful and tactical where he used to be brash. When Doherty does tiptoe into “UnstookieTitled,” he starts, “You smoke your cigarettes down to the bone,” a great tagline for the economical, noirish lyricism that he continues to develop on the sly. “The more that you follow me, the more I get lost,” he sings on the earlier “UnBiloTitled,” like Jim Thompson adapting Trainspotting.
On top of those two, there are about a half-dozen other fine songs here – an opening number with perfectly metered inconclusiveness and hook, some easy fist-pumpers in “French Dog Blues” and “Baddies Boogie,” and the expectedly great acoustic closer, longing and flawless and all centered around another fedora-ed zinger: “What a nice day for a murder.”
Still, there’s collateral to the new ordered approach. On tracks like “Crumb Begging” and “Deft Left Hand,” the music is too driving and overpowering and ill-suited for Doherty, who just gets dragged along by the drums. The great tug-of-war between Doherty and the band is too weighted to favor the latter, the inverse of what was so thoroughly criticized on Albion. There’s also the occasional number, like “There She Goes,” which strives to capture the Winehouse-ian reverie of Albion’s conception, but, unaided by that process, is dry and hollow.
Apologies for the excess of metaphors, but Doherty warrants them – his biggest draw is how organic and overpowering his connection is to the music, how much he lives in it. Leave it all on the field sort of stuff. On Albion, he was a rag doll and a vulture and a cockroach and a vagrant. All too often on Shotter’s, he’s just a lead singer.
