In the wake of The Libertines’ triumphant – and against all odds – return to form last year with the release of the raucous All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade (which kept Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter off the top of the UK charts), Pete Doherty’s continuing his purple patch with a solo release that finds him showing his sweeter, cuddlier underbelly. Felt Better Alive finds him accessorising a quirky sequence of pretty ditties with graceful strings, a mournful trumpet and even a clarinet solo. On “Pot of Gold” – written for his infant daughter – the former wild man croons: “Hush my darling, oh don’t you cry/ Daddy’s trying to write you a lullaby/ And if that lullaby’s a hit, Dad can buy you loads of cool shit/ And forget about the time when they always tried to run me out of town.”
There are many nods to The Beatles on this record, from the gently weeping electric guitar on “The Day The Baron Died” through the “Rain”-esque rolling bass line of “Stade Ocean” to the jaunty nursery rhyme-via-musical hall styling of “Out of Tune Balloon”.
Doherty’s rehab retreat to rural France recalls Paul McCartney skipping off to the Isle of Mull after The Beatles broke up. It was on the Scottish farm that Macca (with wife Linda and their young kids) reckons he learnt to “be a man” by tackling the DIY. Exhausted by the hectic chaos of fame and success, he later spoke of the time he made his home there in the late 1970s as one of rediscovering “simplicity” and the “freedom to try new things”. His musical batteries were recharged, and the melodies began to flow – albeit laced with more cutesy-kidsy whimsy than before. It’s the same deal with Doherty, who (now off the heroin and happily “plotted up” with his wife and young daughter) clearly found his way back to enjoying the tunes – or “les airs” – in l’air francais.
Like their 46-year-old composer, these new songs are charming, callous, witty, boorish, tender, transcendent and obnoxious by turns or all at once. At first, I bristled at the acoustic strum of lead single “Calvados”. Was Doherty’s hymn to the idyllic life of the Normandy farmer (and “the farmer’s wife picking her teeth with a pocket knife”) a bit patronising? But it’s hard to resist the lure of the deliciously ripe hook and the lines about the traditional, orchard and barrel tending graft required to make “liquid gold”. Apparently, Doherty still drinks some alcohol. It’s more surprising to hear the recovering heroin addict singing about “Fingee” (slang for the drug) here, on a track that scuffles from strummed cockney chatter verses to dreamy, sax-laden choruses, mimicking the way the jostle of the score gives way to the high.
Doherty remains a charismatic scene evoker – even though you can’t follow the thread of all his tales, he still makes you feel you were there. Irish singer-songwriter Lisa O’Neill brings some fierce directness to slice through Doherty’s jaunty menace on “Poca Mahoney’s”, a song whose cast includes a crack dealer and an abusive Catholic priest. She spits that “my little soul was five years old” to add a reckoning to his rambling tale. A sleazy fairground organ backs a tale of seaside ritual, and an echo of the old civil war song, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”, ricochets through the spaghetti western of the title track.
Whether or not Doherty’s daughter wants “loads of shit”, I suspect he has another hit on his hands.
