This clear-eyed record of indie-floor-fillers is a reminder that all the debauchery was only ever a sideshow
As befits an artist who single-handedly revived the pork-pie hat as fashion accessory, Pete Doherty has a unique talent for spinning gold from the dullest ingredients. During his landfill indie years with The Libertines, he poured his passion for drugs, football and anthemic singalongs into songs brimming with vulnerability and romanticism. Those same raw materials have, to one degree or another, fuelled everyone from Rod Stewart to Oasis. Yet rather than another likely lad from central casting, Doherty came on like a rollie-smoking Lord Byron in a Queens Park Rangers half-zip. In his hands, the mundane was rendered magical.
Two decades on from the bacchanalian peak of the Camden scene that spawned The Libertines, this pied piper of 21st-century indie-pop is still making musical mischief. Felt Better Alive, his first solo record in nine years, is a work of clear-eyed wonder that reflects Doherty’s latter-day life of contented fatherhood in his home in rural northern France. It is also a rewarding companion piece to The Libertines’ excellent 2024 comeback release, All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade.
That album was a lively collection of indie floor-fillers forged in the bright light of Doherty’s ongoing sobriety from drugs. He weaves much the same magic on Felt Better Alive, which has its origins in fragments of ideas rejected by his bandmates for lacking that elusive “Libertines” quality. The loss is theirs. On rasping opener, “Calvados” he sounds like a millennial Elvis Costello while lyrics about “tending the orchard, stacking up the hay” have a creepy, folksy beauty reminiscent of folk-horror touchstone The Wicker Man. It’s actually about a neighbour who makes his own brandy – an everyday subject to which Doherty applies a gorgeous tint of uncanniness.
Chirpy one moment, profound the next, the album is full of surprises. On “Pot of Gold” he takes on the cliché of the doting parent cooing at their child and, thanks to a sparkling melody and smoky vocals, makes it feel original and profound. He tackles an even steeper challenge on “Stade Océane”, an attempt at Coldplay-style anthemic rock that shimmers like a stadium full of flickering wristbands (while scoring football-hipster bonus points for being named after the home ground of Le Havre FC).
The record isn’t without its indulgences. The toe-curlingly slight “Fingee” (“where the thingee, thingee, thingee”?) could have been credited to “Pete Doher-twee”. Rock bottom is reached on “Ed Belly”, a rockabilly ramble that sounds like an outtake from a lesser White Stripes album and that outstays its welcome within the opening 30 seconds.
But when Doherty’s writing achieves lift-off, it soars, as it does on the Johnny Cash-esque title track, which likens his creative process to exploring the tombstones of the artists who have inspired him (“I tiptoe around gravestones digging up old songs”). The closest he comes to sounding like The Libertines is the rollicking “Poca Mahonney’s”, where his bruised, reedy voice has a flinty foil in Irish folk singer Lisa O’Neill. Telling the story of a (fictional) crack-dealing Catholic priest, the title is presumably inspired by the Pogues – original name Pogue Mahone. It’s an apt reference, with Doherty and O’Neill working up a bluesy storm evocative of the vinegary chemistry between Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl on “Fairytale of New York”.
Back when he dated Kate Moss and was apparently taking drugs every waking hour, O’Doherty was famous for all the wrong reasons. With Felt Better Alive, he reminds us he’s a great songwriter – and that his self-destructive tendencies and the tabloid fame they bought were always just a sideshow. Taken together with his excellent recent output with The Libertines, the album proves that no matter how far into the gutter you have descended, it is always possible to climb back out and feel the sun on your face again.
Stream: “Felt Better Alive”, “Stade Océane”
