NEWS
With their new album, The Libertines are on course for their first Number One LP in two decades.
It comes after the indie heavyweights shared ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade’ last week (April 4) – the fourth studio LP from Pete Doherty, Carl Barât, John Hassall and Gary Powell.
Now, as per a new update from the Official Charts, it looks like the band are on track to top the album charts for the first time in 20 years.
The last time that they locked in the Number One spot was back in 2004, when Doherty and Co. shared their now-iconic eponymous album ‘The Libertines’.
Their last album to get close to the top position in the charts came in 2015, when they secured a second UK Top 10 with the comeback ‘Anthems For Doomed Youth’.
Currently, Earlestown band The K’s are in the Number Two position on the UK Album Charts, and are expected to earn their first Top 5 LP with their debut ‘I Wonder If The World Knows?’ and Conan Gray with his third album ‘Found Heaven’.
Elsewhere on the UK Top 10 are Feeder with ‘Black/Red’, The Black Keys with ‘Ohio Players’ and J. Cole with ‘Might Delete Later’.
Check out the full list here.
The news that The Libertines are on the way to their first Number One album in 20 years comes after the band unveiled their best dance moves on TikTok to help with the push.
In a new spoof social media video, Doherty told Barât: “Of course I want to get a Number One. It’s not like there’s a set formula for it.” Barât replies that he can’t just get the Number One “because you think you deserve one,” before the pair read over suggestions from their label after determining that “sell a lot of records” is not a viable option.
Reviewing ‘…Eastern Esplanade’, NME gave the album a four-star rating and wrote that “the sense of listening in on a band teetering on the precipice of disaster is gone, replaced by a more stable and necessarily safer version of The Libertines”.
It went on: “The results may be patchy, but this is not, and could not be, an album that rides the same intoxicating high as ‘Up the Bracket’. What they have done, though, is find their voice again, and, for the first time in over 20 years, The Libertines feel like a band with a viable future.”
Ahead of its release, The Libertines spoke to NME in October about ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade’, with Carl Barât explaining that the band were all “facing in the same direction” for this record.
“There’s been a lot of focus and everyone’s been working on finding their own personal place in the world as well. Everyone has very different lives and we managed to find something to unite over,” he said.
To celebrate the release, the indie giants recently added some new dates to their 2024 UK and Ireland headline tour – find all the details here.
NEWS
Steve Albini‘s bands Shellac and Big Black now have their catalogues available for listening on Spotify.
Albini passed away aged 61 earlier this month due to a heart attack. He was well known for being the producer of major albums such as Nirvana’s ‘In Utero‘, Pixies’ ‘Surfer Rosa’, PJ Harvey’s ‘Rid of Me’, Manic Street Preachers‘ ‘Journal For Plague Lovers’ and more.
Back in 2022, the late producer took his music off the streaming platform. He had previously criticised the company for platforming anti-vaxxers such as Joe Rogan, and tweeted later that they were a “terrible company”, adding: “I don’t want to be part of their business”.
He later told Attack Magazine that Spotify was “one of the few places outside of record stores where recorded music can earn anything at all, and for bands [with] more generous, honest relationships with independent labels not part of the ownership trust, then the payments from Spotify, though meager per-play, can add up to a viable income stream. Nobody’s getting rich, but it could pay for the groceries.”
Now, it appears that Albini’s work with his bands Shellac and Big Black are now available to stream on Spotify. This include’s Shellac’s final album ‘To All Trains’, which was announced shortly before Albini’s death and was released last Friday (May 17).
Tributes have poured in for the legendary producer since the announcement of his death. Our NME obituary hailed him as “a lone voice of anti-industry punk scene ethics, even as he worked with major labels on some of the biggest names in alternative rock.”
Meanwhile, Foo Fighters dedicated a rendition of ‘My Hero’ to the late producer in Charlotte, North Carolina last week.
“Tonight I’d like to dedicate this song to a friend that we lost the other day, who I’ve known a long, long time,” Foos frontman Dave Grohl told the crowd. “He left us much too soon. He’s touched all of your lives, I’m sure. I’m talking about Steve Albini. For those of you who know, you know. For those of you who don’t know, just remember that name: Steve Albini. Let’s sing this one for him.”
PJ Harvey also said he “changed the course of my life” during sessions for her 1993 LP ‘Rid Of Me’., and Joanna Newsom dedicated a version of her song ‘Cosmia’ to him, who engineered her 2006 album ‘Ys’. See further tributes here.
Elsewhere, Yourcodenameis:milo spoke to NME about how the 20th anniversary of their LP ‘All Roads To Fault’ was made all the more profound by the passing of Albini, who engineered the album.
Remembering their time with the punk and production legend, Lockey said: “We paid attention, saw everything he did, asked questions that he would gladly spend ages answering”.
“He once stopped the session and proceeded to give us a lecture on how the peanut built America. He schooled us in billiards, then showed us his favourite cooking shows that he’d recorded. It was all so natural and encouraging, we could do what the fuck we wanted and he’d capture it. That’s the deal, and we fucking loved it.”
