Rough Trade
2002
Up The Bracket (Explicit)
About This Album
The first British band to rival the garage rock revival sparked by the Strokes and White Stripes in the U.S., the Hives in Sweden, and the Datsuns in, er, New Zealand, the Libertines burst onto the scene with Up the Bracket, a debut album so confident and consistent that the easiest way to describe it is 2002's answer to Is This It. That's not just because singer/guitarist Pete Doherty's slurred, husky vocals sound like Julian Casablancas' with the added bonus of a fetching Cockney accent (or that both groups share the same tousled, denim-clad fashion sense); virtually every song on Up the Bracket is chock-full of the same kind of bouncy, aggressive guitars, expressive, economic drums, and irresistible hooks that made the Strokes' debut almost too catchy for the band's credibility. However, the resemblance is probably due more to the constant trading of musical ideas between the States and the U.K. than to bandwagon-jumping -- the Strokes' sound owes as much to Britpop sensations like Supergrass (who had the Libertines as their opening band on their 2002 U.K. tour) and Elastica as it does to American influences like the Stooges and the Velvet Underground. Likewise, the Libertines play fast and loose with four decades' worth of British rock history, mixing bits and bobs of British Invasion, mod, punk, and Britpop with the sound of their contemporaries.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,4,7,13 and 14)

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