Album Review- Peter Doherty and Frederic Lo- The Fantasy Life of Poetry and Crime (2022)

Roughly 17 years ago, a series of acoustic Pete Doherty recordings (at various times bootlegged as The Shaken and Withdrawn Megamix or The Freewheelin Pete Doherty) was making its rounds. It revealed an artist with a God given voice and talent for melody and words. One would have predicted that Doherty would grow to be his generation’s Morrissey- a bedsit poet. That took longer than we thought. For starters, it didn’t really look like Pete might live long enough to become a mature artist. The other reason is that Pete’s recorded material to date has only worked in a standard rock band format- whether it was the Libertines, Babyshambles or the Puta Madres. For some reason, his solo albums seem to fall short (even when paired with Morrissey/Smiths producer Stephen Street) But Federic Lo seems to have found some way to get Pete closer to delivering his Vauxhall and I. I know the French producer/ musician Lo only through his recent collaboration album with Bill Pritchard, a similarly melancholic wordsmith. “Life of” isn’t a perfect album (In a straight up pick, I’d choose the 2019 Puta Madres disc) but it has some sublime moments. The title track is just that- perfectly capturing the mood of those early Doherty sessions with studio quality. It captures all of that romantic Byron and Rimbaud and Kerouac mythologies that rock stars aspire to There’s nothing else quite to that high level but it is a fine album. Hurt somewhat by a few Covid references (titles like “The Epidemiologist” and “Yes I Wear a Mask”) that immediately date it despite some good ideas. The former one of the better songs on the album heads into Costello territory, the latter would have been a great idea for a song a decade ago, but now conjures only images of N95s. Lo’s music is a good counterpart for Doherty. “The Ballad Of” has the intimate feel of the home recordings but are given an epic ending. “You Can’t Keep from it me Forever” is single worthy- a more mature Libertines number. After the first four songs, closer Far from the Madding Crowd is as close as it gets back to radio material. But Doherty fans won’t be disappointed as it changes over to the B side. All of the songs stay with a delicate vocal touch over restrained Baroque (on occasion, Beatlesque) pop. “Keeping me on File” is maybe the only think I would call a clunker. I know this set of songs won’t convert you if this isn’t your thing (The Guardian calls it weak, among other things in a two-star review) already, but as a Doherty fan, this seems to indicate that if there is such a thing as a sober, married, mature Doherty as previewed here, then there’s still plenty of great songs still to come. 2022 - Strap Originals and Water Music