Astralwerks
2009
Grace / Wastelands
About This Album
Grace/Wastelands is credited to Peter Doherty, not Pete, and that extra R isn't just an affectation. The formal version of his name fits his first solo album's reflective viewpoint -- Doherty turned 30 shortly before it was released, and its maturity feels like a conscious, and necessary, retreat from the chaos surrounding his music with Babyshambles. Even the title Grace/Wastelands feels like a slightly more grown-up take on the wordplay he's used to find that fine line between poetic beauty and destruction since the Libertines. This is easily the best-sounding album Doherty has been involved with, neither self-consciously "raw" nor overly polished; it lets the music be as simple or as elaborate as it needs to be. Doherty reunited with Shotter's Nation producer Stephen Street for this set, and Street recruited Blur's Graham Coxon to play guitar on almost every track here. Coxon and Doherty are an inspired pairing, not just because Coxon is a brilliant guitarist, but because he's also struggled with substance abuse (though he was never as flamboyantly self-destructive as Doherty) and been in a band deemed at one time the saviors of British music. It feels like more was expected of Doherty on Grace/Wastelands than on his previous projects, or perhaps he expected more of himself: his clear-eyed singing and playing do these largely acoustic, often elegant, and usually down-to-earth songs justice, succeeding where Down in Albion's quieter moments got lost in fog and chaos.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,4 and 10)

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