The Libertines The Libertines Rough Trade

If Neil Young was right and every junkie's like a setting sun, Pete Doherty is burning some serious daylight. In the two years since his band the Libertines released their gloriously sloppy debut, Up the Bracket, the 25-year-old singer/guitarist has struggled with an epic substance-abuse problem. Last year, he burglarized the London flat of Libertines co-founder Carl Barat, serving two months in jail. And this June, he fled a rehab program at a Thailand monastery; according to a British newspaper interview, Doherty spent the next three days holed up in a Bangkok hotel, ordering heroin from room service. At press time, the band had replaced their troubled compatriot with guitarist Anthony Rossomando.

It's possible this album isn't entirely about Doherty's travails and the toll they've taken on his bandmates. But Barat suggested otherwise at a festival in July, when he dedicated the band's noisy yet wistful new single, "Can't Stand Me Now," to the absent Doherty. The first song on The Libertines, "Can't Stand Me Now" opens with a cymbal-crashing false start, then two tender guitars jostle for space while Barat and Doherty trade lines that sound like fragments of an argument ("You twisted and tore our love apart...If you wanna try / There's no worse you could do"). It's a great, sad song, even if listening to it feels like eavesdropping on an intervention.

It was platonic boy-love that made Up the Bracket so boisterous--Barat and Doherty sang and played like they couldn't decide whether to beat each other up or make out. This time, that love's on the rocks, and the result is a dark, tense record, but one still crackling with life. The Libertines is also the follow-up to an album that made the band overnight Brit-rock stars, which means that there are songs about the vicissitudes of fame. On "The Man Who Would Be King," Doherty sings, "I lived my dreams today / And I lived it yesterday / And I'll be living yours tomorrow / So don't look at me that way." He sounds authentically terrified.

There's no telling how the Libertines will fare in the long run; the shows they played in the States last year without their erstwhile co-founder were pretty bleak, and they still bash along like a teenage mutant Clash. But they've developed an ear for the refined pop that's as much their national inheritance as sneering pogo punk. "Don't Be Shy" and the lovely breakup song "Music When the Lights Go Out" are more than kinda Kinks. There's very little romance in self-destruction when you get down to it, but every so often, a junkie's also like a Waterloo sunset.

Grade: A-