15.05, Main Stage

Today THE LIBERTINES have even more car-crash appeal than normal. They were frequently a perversely engaging mess even before Pete fell overboard. Pity poor Mick Jones, whose job it was to try and get their ramshackle tunes down in the studio – that the result, Up The Bracket, is so all over the place only goes to confirm that the task was beyond him. But now that Pete’s sidelined for the foreseeable future with what you might euphemistically refer to as “personal difficulties” (ie drug addiction and a burglary charge), I find myself drawn by the lure of what will surely be the band’s gruesome death throes, and the spectacle of Carl Barat desperately trying to hold it all together on his own. In this respect I’m left disappointed – they’re competent and tidy. But then that’s not what we want from The Libertines – we want scrappiness with the occasional glimmer of genius, and we want the onstage duelling and banter between Barat and Doherty that gives their gigs a frisson of excitement and unpredictability. When Carl sings ‘What A Waster’ (“What a waster, what a fucking waster / You pissed it all up the wall”), I can’t help but feel it’s directed squarely at his errant bandmate.