Babyshambles - "Shotter's Nation"

[roentgenizdat]

Album was produced by Stephen Street and will be released in the UK on October 1 through Parlophone Records and in the US on October 23 through Astralwerks.

Shotter's Nation tracklisting

Carry On Up The Morning
Delivery
You Talk
Unbilotitled
Side Of The Road
Crumb Begging
Unstookietitled
French Dog Blues
There She Goes
Baddies' Boogie
Deft Left Hand
The Lost Art Of Murder





Delivery is the first single scheduled for release September 17th.

Maxi CD: Delivery / Stone Me / I Wish / Delivery (video)
2 track CD: Delivery / A Day Out In New Brighton
7" red vinyl: Delivery b/w Torn


Babyshambles' new album - track-by-track verdict

Babyshambles' eagerly awaited new album will be out later this year - and we've got an exclusive track-by-track preview for you here.

Anthony Thornton, the author of the 2006 book The Libertines: Bound Together, has listened to the as-yet-untitled record - and below is his verdict.

Carry On Up The Morning
Starting with a rambunctious solo as prickly and spiky as anything on 'Down In Albion', momentarily it sounds like it will be a close cousin of that record. Then the whole band sweeps in and it's clear it's completely different. It sounds big and anthemic without compromising. And then there's the first surprise: Pete Doherty swaps lines - almost to the point of duetting - with himself. It's disorientating but very cool.

Key lyric: Given up trying to explain/Put it in a song instead

Delivery
The first single from the album features a riff reminiscent of The Kinks' 'All Day And All Of The Night'. The passionate chorus, driven by Mick Whitnall's arpeggios seemingly take the song to an emotional peak before and a chorus of 'oooohs' pushes it even higher. A demo version was available on the Stookie + Jim Bumfest Demos.

Key lyric: I'm f*cked, forlorn, frozen beneath the summer/Don't sing along or you'll get what I got

You Talk
Shuffles on with a kind of swagger of Blondie's 'One Way Or Another' with a staccato riff. Pete mangles the phrase "You Talk" so it becomes a vocal refrain part-accusative, part jealous.

Key lyric: Songs are just a game/I'm getting better at cheating at

Unbilotitled
Featuring a story with a cast of characters including Doherty, Wolfman and Mick Whitnall (Blue Eyes) this delicate arrangement is one of the prettiest melodies of the album. It's probably the only recorded song featuring a plea to put trousers on.

Key lyric: Wolfman said to Blue Eyes 'put your trousers back on'

Side Of the Road
Has been around since The Libertines' 2003 New York sessions (confusingly called 'The Babyshambles Sessions') a loose ramshackle guitar riff that sounds like the 'Steptoe & Son' TV theme, accelerates into a punk thrash featuring Doherty's machine-gun delivery.

Key lyric: Half dead a third alive a quarter ticking/over on the middle by the side of the road

Crumb Begging Baghead
A verse that sounds like cross between The Stone Roses and a classic 1960s garage rock track with a juddering guitar riff. The outro is a Hammond Organ-driven double speed outro.

Key lyric: I'm crumb-begging baghead baby/I bet you say that to all the girls

Unstookietitled
Inspired by a guitar riff from 'F*ck Forever' (Doherty even quotes the song) the delicate riff and restrained music bursts into one of Babyshambles' catchiest songs.

Key lyric: You smoke your cigarettes down to the bone

French Dog Blues
Named after Doherty's hand-drawn French Dog that adorns the cover of 'Down In Albion'. Delicate waves of guitar ebb and flow as before a Who-esque peak.

Key lyric: So this washes over you/My French Dog Blues

There She Goes
Originally drafted and played solo acoustic by Doherty, this one features upright double bass and brushes giving it a loose jazzy feel wonderful at odds with anything the songwriter has done previously except, perhaps, on the very earliest Libertines demos.

Key lyric: Caught sight of her white plimsoll/You were dancing to Northern Soul

Baddies' Boogie
This is story of a relationship that started with fireworks and finds them 20 years later loathing each other. A poetic riff in the middle that out-miserables the likes of Plan B and will have crowds screaming a belligerent "lousy life" at the top of their lungs come autumn.

Key lyric: Thinking she's far too good looking/To do the cooking/Oooh, that was twenty years ago

Deft Left Hand
From the massive insistent guitar riff, before falling on a staccato subtle toy xylophone and repeating riff and a massive chorus of "Iiiiiii wanna stay by your side", the song showcases how producer Stephen Street's input has expanded Babyshambles' musical scope.

Key lyric: Went from cheery vagabondage to cold-blued luxury/In four years

The Lost Art Of Murder
First aired on the 'Friday Night With Jonathan Ross' show, this recording features '60s folk legend Bert Jansch accompanies him (he last performed it at Hackney Empire on Jansch's 'Needle Of Death'). Doherty's lilting voice weaves with the guitar on this precise delicate final song.

Key lyric: You call yourself a killer boy but the only thing you're killing is your time

[Adz]

Massive release!

[roentgenizdat]

Pete Doherty and NME team up to give away free single

Babyshambles are giving their comeback single away for free, exclusively with NME.

The band, who are gearing up to return with their second album 'Shotter's Nation' in the autumn, will return with their first release since 2006 with a special version of 'Delivery'.

The song will appear on seven-inch vinyl and will only be available with the issue of NME that's out on September 11 - a full week before the single's full release (September 17).

The giveaway sees Doherty and his band taking a leaf out of The White Stripes' book.

Their first release from 'Icky Thump' was vinyl-only single 'Rag And Bone', which we gave away free back in June.

That release, on special red vinyl, was so sought after that not only were people hunting down copies in Britain, fans from around the world got in touch desperate to get hold of the release.

Now Babyshambles have decided to get their music to fans in the same way.

The single will feature an acoustic version of 'Delivery' recorded at the band's acclaimed Jim + Stookie Bumfest sessions.

Some takes from these recordings have already being devoured by fans online, but this is the first time anything from the sessions has been available officially.

The B-side, meanwhile, will feature an interview with the band discussing their upcoming album.

"It's good to give NME readers the chance to hear 'Delivery' as a raw, stripped-down demo," declared drummer Adam Ficek, "and also give an insight into how the song grew, developed and finally emerged into the actual finished album version."

See this week's issue of NME - on UK newsstands from tomorrow (August 22) - for more on this special release, and the track's origins.

[Gray.]

Oh God, Doperty needs to get his act together. Stay off the crack!

[busyboy]

sayiiiiii said:

Oh God, Doperty needs to get his act together. Stay off the crack!

The latest report indicated he was drug-free. Unbelievable, LOL! :o

[Gray.]

Seriously though, what is Kate Moss thinking dating him? Or are they still even together?

[Adz]

They broke up.

[roentgenizdat]

Good news for fans across the pond...

Babyshambles album gets a US release

Babyshambles have announced the US release date of their forthcoming sophomore album 'Shotter's Nation'.

The follow-up to 2005's 'Down In Albion' will hit Stateside on October 23 via Astralwerks.

The tracklisting for both the US and UK versions of 'Shotter's Nation' are identical.

[Adz]

Should be interesting to see how it goes.

[busyboy]

They found cocaine... On his cat...

Doherty's cat 'drugged'

Police are investigating claims that Pete Doherty's cat has been poisoned by drugs, according to reports.

The kitten is understood to have been removed from his home, amid reports that its blood stream had been infected by cocaine.

The animal is understood to have been taken ill and required treatment by a vet, where the drug issue was uncovered.

Because of the serious nature of the matter, police have been informed although it is unclear if charges against the cat's owner will follow.

An RSPCA spokesperson said: "It is a police matter, so we cannot deny or confirm the identity of the man who had the kitten removed.

"But it is very important to protect animals from substances that can do them serious harm."

Doherty's band, Babyshambles, release their new album, "Shotter's Nation", on October 1.

[Adz]

I just heard 'Carry Up The Morning' studio version.

It's pretty fantastic!

[oscillations.]

Pete just sent Kate a dead mouse in the post:
dlisted.com/node/15469

Chivalry at its finest.

[Adz]

Not long now, I've preordered the cd from some UK site.

[Adz]

mtv.co.uk/babyshambles

hear the album

[Skip To The End]

It actually not as bad as I thong it would.
way better then the first album

[busyboy]

#5 debut in the UK.

[Adz]

Damn, was hoping for 4.

Quality album.

[Adz]

Foir is producing. Over half already recorded. Hope to have the album completed by summer then released afterwards.
Fior says there is a spark there - “he’s gone and produced the album he wanted to....now that the album is out and people like it there’s space to relax and record”. - [not many on this forum liked that album!]
New album will probably feature 12 songs, inc Ends, Cuckoo, Siberian Fur & Darksome Sea (both piano led songs), a more orchestral version of For Lovers, , & Withdrawn and Shaken (apparently sounds a bit like The Blinding, it features a spoken word part).
“One of the songs is Vegas showtime, it’ll give The Killers a run for their money” (I really hope he’s being sarcastic)
Peter says the deal with Parlophone was for 2 Shambles albums & 1 solo. So there is no reason for the label to be opposed.
London rapper Klashnekoff & The Thirst contribute to the album. Klashnekoff includes a lyric on Ends that goes ‘Come swingin’ like McGuigan with a barrage of punches’.
Influences as diverse as pre-electic Bolan, Steely Dan, Doors & John Barry.
“I think we’re trying to move on from where (former boyband) Blue left off.” Peter says, when the NME ask him if this will be more tender than the last Shambles album.

[Adz]

It is early November 2007 and Babyshambles, fronted by the most self-destructive British singer of his generation (sorry, Amy Winehouse, you’ve only been at this for a year), have been so buoyed by the reception to their recently released second album, Shotters Nation—100,000 already sold in the U.K., on its way to eclipsing 2005’s debut, Down in Albion—that Doherty is now convinced they have a tangible future. If Albion was the sound of a band unravelling, then Shotters Nation (featuring four songs cowritten by and credited to Kate Moss, whom Doherty very publicly dated for two years) is freewheeling and whip-smart. It still rattles with Doherty’s many ghosts, of course, and in the margins of tracks like “Crumb Begging Baghead” and “UnBiloTitled,” one can hear what life must be like when you are confronting vampiric drug dealers one moment and splitting from your supermodel girlfriend the next. The regret is palpable. “It’s a lousy life for the washed-up wife / Of a permanently plastered, pissed-up bastard,” he wails on “Baddie’s Boogie.”


But Shotters Nation also reveals a singer sounding more focused than he has been in years, due in no small part to influential Britpop producer Stephen Street, who’s overseen albums by the Smiths and Blur. A fan of Doherty’s former band, the Libertines, he only accepted the job on the proviso that the singer would be in a healthy state.

“I love his ramshackle style,” Street says. “I even loved a lot of Down in Albion. But despite assurances to the contrary, it became evident in our very first week that he wasn’t well at all. I made him go home and work on lyrics, which was difficult, because he has a horrible group hanging around him, trying to make money off him.”

The recording sessions lasted six weeks and were punctuated by arguments, recriminations, and tears. Street was so continually exasperated by Doherty’s addled state that he often threatened to walk, endeavoring to capture the singer’s creative bursts as and when they occurred, later relying on the rest of the band to give these ramblings shape and context. Consequently, the album offers a better image of the man than he perhaps deserves.

“Pete is incredibly frustrating, yet you can’t help but like him. The trouble is, he knows it,” Street says. “He was challenging, but so was Morrissey, and sometimes you get the best out of people in difficult situations.”

For all the struggle, Shotters Nation is a critical success in England, the Daily Telegraph newspaper calling it “probably the best English rock album anyone is going to make [in 2007].” Even his detractors might allow that Doherty is an uncommonly gifted songwriter, capable of penning the kind of songs whose firework momentum can spawn entire movements, romanticizing working-class England in a way that inspired like-minded, hyperverbal young bands like Arctic Monkeys, the View, Razorlight, the Fratellis, and the Cribs. “[The Libertines] galvanized the DIY mind-set,” says the Cribs’ Ryan Jarman. “It’s a shame—he’ll never shed that public-enemy-number-one image and his music winds up being a shadow of the fact.”

Certainly, in America, where Shotters Nation had at press time sold just 5,000 copies since its October release, he is still little more than the junkie fuckup who almost destroyed Kate Moss’s career—hence the urgency to turn things around. Videos for the singles “You Talk” and “French Dog Blues” impressed even the most cynical of bloginistas, but without the ability to tour the U.S., thanks to no fewer than 18 arrests in the past five years, Doherty is not likely to gain entry anytime soon. As a result, he still seems an imaginary figure, like some nihilist Easter Bunny. His American label, though, is poised with a contingency plan.

“This is an area where the Internet can lessen how severe a situation like this is,” says Glenn Mendlinger, general manager at Astralwerks. “People can see live footage of a band in real time after a gig now. It might not be ideal, but we want to build Doherty’s profile here in any way we can. I was always a big fan of the Libertines, and this new record is a bold step forward. With Pete, you really have to separate the tabloid sensationalism from his music.”

Read the full feature on Pete Doherty in the February 2008 issue of Spin, on newsstands January 29th!