I am a believer that music is to be appreciated in the format and order which it is presented. Therefore, I'm much more likely to buy an entire album than I am to buy a single. I hear something I like and, like music-demanding royalty, I wish to be impressed with an entire collection of similarly pleasing sounds. So, when I get a new album, I listen from start to finish without skipping tracks. It's a good practice, anyway, because there is a reason to the order of songs on an album and I think it is rather unappreciated.
But it's not easy to create a perfect set of 10-14 songs that is really going to keep the audience interested all the way through with equal enthusiasm. Some of my favourite albums have tracks that I often (though not always) skip just because "eh, I'm not in the mood for that one." So, I become quickly overjoyed when I find what I regard as a "perfect album:" an album with absolutely no shit songs on it. Sequel to the Prequel by Babyshambles is one such album.
While listening to said album, something amazing happens: when it's time to turn off the music, you're left thinking "oh, yeah, I'll change it after this song" until you've listened to the whole thing in its entirety 18 times. My best friend and I recently took a road trip and I'd say we spent at least 6 consecutive driving hours listening to this album. Not to mention listening to it while we did our hair in the morning and while we cooked our meals...and singing it when there was a lull in conversation. It's one of those albums that you just can't get enough of. I live for things like this.
But why? Make way for my track-by-track generalisation of the musical emotion:
There are 12 tracks on Sequel to the Prequel. It begins with a fiercely accented punk song ("Fireman") to get your blood going. This opener is less than two minutes long and pretty much holds your attention hostage. Try to successfully do another task while listening to it. I dare you.
After your attention has been caught, you are lulled in to a gorgeous harmonisation against a beautiful guitar riff ("Nothing Comes to Nothing") before being sent in to something that has a hook that will make you hum along even though you don't know the words yet ("New Pair"). By this point, you're in a serious listening mode. You want, more than anything, to already know all the words. So then you're gifted a treat with track 4 ("Farmer's Daughter"). The lyrics are simple enough to catch on to and the chorus takes so much dedication to sing that you may as well just start challenging your friends to who can best keep the notes steady. This song is epic.
Things start to pick up in a folk-jazz way at the next point ("Fall From Grace") and your ears are tickled with a riff you already know from your past as the band used the hook from Bob Dylan's "I Want You" as the bones of this song. And they used it well.
And in case the memory of Bob Dylan put you in a relative nostalgic slump, "Maybelline" will bring you right back to the current day and you will undoubtedly be singing it in your sleep. I could listen to Peter Doherty say that name all day long. He uses his voice as a complicated instrument whereas a lot of other singers seem to use theirs as a vessel for reading poetry to a beat.
After that quick chance to suck in a heavy breath, we dive deep in to the jazzy sounds for the title track ("Sequel to the Prequel"). At this point, you're dancing like it's 1946; but next ("Dr. No") you're slowing down and you're chilling in the Caribbean.
"There's sharks in the water and the water's deep..."
The climax comes with the track "Penguins," which is a gorgeous track that encompasses three separate moods in to one song. I'd say the lines including and directly following "I really don't like your boyfriend's face; so I'm going to try and take his place" may be the most satisfying moments on the whole album. The climax of that song is the climax for the whole album.
We fall to conclusion for that track, but then dip in to some refreshing clean and upbeat acoustics with fiddle accompaniments ("Picture Me in a Hospital") which brings together all of the musical aspects of the preceding songs in great summary.
The last two tracks are genius because you get a heavier song to re-energise you ("Seven Shades") and then the finish is a deep, dark, heavy track ("Minefield") that mixes both distortion and clean electric; and we end on a whisper. You've just been on an audible roller-coaster. Fucking brilliant.
All of that, however, is just a summary of the sound. That is an interpretation by someone who doesn't speak the language of the lyrics. Once you add in the English language, everything changes. Peter Doherty writes lyrics that make me feel. I use the word "feel" as a general statement, too, because it's hard to pinpoint the feeling exactly.
Empathetic luminous tragedy?
Gorgeous optimistic sadness?
Hopeful hopelessness?
Longing?
That's the best I have.
The entire album is a story, I feel, and each song is a separate honest confession. Like a true public poet, though, it's all written in such a way that anyone with any sense of tragedy can relate; so long as they believe that there is a light somewhere. That's the key to the music: that there is a light. "There's still a song for me" ("Picture Me in a Hospital") as it were.
Another really important feature of the lyrics is that they appear to be more spur-of-the-moment than one would expect. As I drove through the hills listening, my passenger read the lyrics printed in the CD booklet and brought to my attention that the singing doesn't always match the writing. Sometimes the feeling of the song was written as a "can't," but expressed as a "won't;" and, as she expressed in awe, there is a big difference between those two proclamations. I adore this spontaneous personalisation and the reality that is in the music of Babyshambles. J'adore la passion!
As for a video, there hasn't been much television about it (and you know how I love a good live performance), so the best I have is the official album sampler. It has a minute of each song so after the first thirty seconds, you should probably be sold.
What's it like on the moral high ground? Judging by your face, well, I'm glad I never asked.
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