If there’s an extra frisson of anticipation among the crowd this evening, it’s maybe because this is the most intimate Libertines show in Manchester in over a decade.
There was a time, in their chaotic heyday, where there’d be an extra crackle of excitement among the audience because you didn’t know what state they’d turn up in - if at all.
Regardless of how you feel about their music, there’s no denying that the London four-piece have one of British rock and roll’s great backstories; the drugs, the fights, and the intensity of the relationship between dual frontmen Carl Barât and Pete Doherty all held an appeal to the romantic amongst the indie faithful.
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By the time they split, messily, in 2004, it looked like a case of the candle that burns twice as bright burning half as long.
Things have changed since they reformed, apparently for good, in 2014. A comeback album, Anthems for Doomed Youth , was well-received a year later, suggesting that the old magic still existed between Barat and Doherty still existed, and since, they’ve toured extensively and reliably.
They've opened their own hotel in Margate, and the only tabloid headlines that the once-notorious Doherty has generated in recent years were for polishing off an enormous fried breakfast challenge at a Margate cafe in under twenty minutes back in 2018.
They’re only about ten minutes late onstage tonight, setting the tone for an evening of, if you remember the good/bad old days, unnerving polish. There’s no new album to plug, so this is instead a greatest hits set that proves that Doomed Youth material is warmly regarded by both band and fans; an epic ‘You’re My Waterloo’, which has Barât flitting between piano and guitar, is a genuine standout, as is a boisterous take on ‘Gunga Din’.
Elsewhere, there’s moments of quiet beauty - a softly anthemic ‘What Katie Did’, for instance - but in the main, this is a slick reminder of what’s made The Libertines such a staple of indie discos over the past decade or so, with ‘Up the Bracket’, ‘Boys in the Band’ and ‘Don’t Look Back Into the Sun’ inspiring noisy singalongs.
Closer ‘Time for Heroes’, meanwhile, is dedicated by Doherty to a triumvirate of local legends; Franny Lee, Denis Law, and Johnny Marr.
There is the nagging feeling, though, that the Good Ship Albion might be navigating the waters a touch too smoothly for its own good.
Next summer, they’ll celebrate the 20th anniversary of landmark debut Up the Bracket with some major outdoor shows, including one across town at Castlefield Bowl.
With no new music on the horizon nearly seven years since Doomed Youth , are they running the risk of becoming a pure nostalgia act - and would that dilute the poetry of the self-mythologising likes of ‘Can’t Stand Me Now’ and ‘What Became of the Likely Lads’?
As long as they’re firing through one of the great British indie rock songbooks as assuredly as this, the crowds won’t care, and the band, for their part, are having the time of their lives - drummer Gary Powell’s smile is brighter than his fluorescent yellow trousers, which is saying something.
Crucially, the onstage chemistry is evidently still there between brothers-in-arms Barât and Doherty; perhaps their musical bond will last as long as they’d envisioned it when they got matching ‘libertine’ tattoos back in the day, which is something you’d have gotten long odds on at the time.
