Following on from an impressive set with the Libertines – last year’s No 1 album All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade – Peter Doherty returns to the fray with his first solo album in nine years.
In youth renowned for opiates, crack and chaos, and for cholesterol over alcohol in middle age (he’s now 46), the songs on Felt Better Alive come across as swiftly taken snapshots developed in a musical dark room. Some tracks feel like demos awaiting a few more layers of invention, others more richly built up, but all of them trailing the loose, intimate charm of home-made things, wrapped in a spirit of dirty romanticism and an English whimsy that comes easily to Doherty, especially in his home in Normandy.
All in all, it's a slippery mixture of innocence and sickly experience, honesty and archness. Felt Better Alive is one of those snappy, dark but funny phrases that he’s good at digging up and stretching out a bit. It begins with “Calvados”, a paean to the after-life cycle of the apple, from fruitfall to powerful Normandy spirit, then embraces lullabies for his daughter on “Pot of Gold”, sings praises to Le Havre’s home ground on “Stade Ocean”, sketches out a couple of nefarious characters in song (“Ed Belly” and a paedo priest in “Poca Mahonney’s” (featuring the voice of the excellent Irish singer songwriter Lisa O Neill) and closes with a song to the “Empty Room”, that domestic zone of creation where our man sits with his guitar in hand, music and lyrics in mind.
The title track has a Marty Robbins cowboy feel, topped by lyrics that travel a bit further than off the cuff. If only the same could be said of “Fingee” (a backstage code word) with its gratingly irritating chorus. Glowering in its darkness and anger, “Poca Mahonney’s” is the best track on the album, raised by O’Neill’s excellent vocals, while “Petre del la Mare” is a close second, with its wild mix of organ, Fall-like rockabilly, the voice of Doherty’s local priest in Le Havre, and the sound of the sea.
