In early 2006 Dirty Pretty Things headlined the Camden Crawl. They had been together for just six months and they’d hardly played any shows. Unsurprisingly, the gig was average at best. But worse than being just average, they just didn’t have enough new material to go around. So what did they do? Of course, Barat and friends cracked out the old reliable Libertines classics. The crowd went crazy. But I stood there wondering why all of a sudden I was watching a Libertines tribute act. Maybe I was just bitter that I was watching Didz Hammond, former wild man of the once omnipotent The Cooper Temple Clause, playing another band’s music.

 

But that was then. And since then, Dirty Pretty Things have established themselves as a distinguished British indie band. This, their second full-length offering, confirms what many people already suspected: Barat is an extremely talented songwriter. He sings of love, of loss and the casualties and fickleness of fame and arranges the music around his words beautifully. But it doesn’t always come together as well as you might expect.

 

Opener Buzzards and Crows pecks holes in the ‘self obsessed’ scene Barat finds himself in. Hippy’s Son starts off boisterous and promising but just as the chorus hits it sounds like a song from Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Recent single Tired of England is Barat at his best and shows us just how good he can really be, if only he was more consistent.

 

The remainder of the 12-track album unravels relatively unnoticeably. Barat’s vocals are often beautiful; he manages to revert from Liam Gallagher brashness to delicate murmurs, and Powell on drums is unfailing throughout. However, I find little here to get truly excited about. Hopefully, one day all of the components will fuse together and we will truly fall in love with them. 5/10

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