The Libertines have given an update on their forthcoming new album with frontman Carl Barât saying that it will have a “different energy”.
The band worked on the record in Jamaica, with Pete Doherty saying previously that they had a “productive” summer working on new material for the band’s fourth studio album before the European leg of their recent tour.
“It’s been quite productive. Just trying to write some new songs,” he said at the time. He also previously told NME that he was confident that the record would be out by the end of 2022, but that hasn’t come to fruition.
On their recent sessions, Doherty has now told NME‘s In Conversation series: “We put a few new songs together, me and Carl.”
Barât added: “Now the four of us just have to learn and play them, and write a few more.
“Sonically, we want to do something we haven’t done before… I think we’ll be looking to do something with a different energy than before. But we’re not at that stage yet.”
The pair also shared details of a new track called called ‘Shiver’ which Doherty explained has “got a real sentimental hark back” to previous Libertines cuts ‘The Delaney’, ‘France’ and ‘Music When The Lights Go Out’. Co-frontman Barât agreed, adding: “Yeah, ‘Shiver’’s great. I was listening to that last night, actually.”
Drummer Gary Powell told NME in August that his focus was on “forging forward” with the band’s fourth album. “The good thing is everybody’s been writing,” Powell said. “Obviously, we’re not going to try and reinvent the wheel… but I think we can push the boat out a little more while still bringing something that has the same emotional integrity and dynamism that the audience craves when they come to a Libertines show.”
When they first started work on the record in 2019, Doherty said that the band had been exploring a number of ambitious directions on new material, likening it to the diversity of The Clash‘s divisive ‘Sandinista’.
“Carl wants to do a ‘Sandinista’ thing with all these mad ideas that we’ve got, so we’ll have all these freestyle things and folky things, then there’s the more traditional Doherty/Barat songs,” Doherty said at the time. “I don’t think the Gary and John songs are part of that, because they’re really, really strong songs.”
Doherty continued: “It’s all very positive, but it’s been murder getting to that because I was very unsettled and uncomfortable for those first sessions. I didn’t know that everyone else was, but it turns out that there was great results from that. Everyone came out going ‘What the fuck’s going on with this band, right?’”
The Libertines’ last album came by way of 2015’s ‘Anthems For Doomed Youth’, and was called by former NME journalist Matt Wilkinson at the time “the most rounded album The Libertines have ever made”.
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