This week Carl Barât – the Rick to Pete Doherty's Vyvyan in the Libertines' own take on The Young Ones – aims to ride the wave of his old band's successful Reading/Leeds festival reunion with the dual release of his first solo album and an autobiography, Threepenny Memoir. Unfortunately Brecht and Weill need not worry about being upstaged by either. This self-titled snoozer misses any of the zip that made the Libs and, to an extent, erstwhile offshoot Dirty Pretty Things arresting. Besides J'Regrette J'Regrette, which sounds like something by old chum Johnny Borrell (and seems to have a chorus about the hyper-addictive iPhone game Angry Birds), this is a brooding break-up record characterised by the irksome, near-spoken word The Fall, co-written by Neil Hannon. Then there's the dreary Ode to a Girl and So Long, My Lover in which Carl filters James Blunt through a pint of Camden snakebite. In it, Barât croons "So long my lover, it's oooover," and, dear god, the listener wishes it was.
Will Dean
The GuardianTramp
