What We're Listening To

We don't know Pete Doherty after all.

Or at least that's what his myspace page tells us.

All that tedious stuff about drugs and Kate Moss? That's not the real Pete, which must be an embarrassment to the Tube papers that spent all that time following the wrong guy when there was actual news to be found.

Myspace blurb is keen to talk about Peter, the real man, the vulnerable troubadour beneath. And debut solo effort Grace/Wastelands is certainly more intimate than his Libertines work.

The idyllic Arcady will be familiar to gig-goers, while A Little Death Around The Eyes has a decent Bond-like ambience, but the "piano frolic" Sweet By And By sounds oddly like a bad Randy Newman impression.

The album finds Doherty walking the tightrope between wistfulness and self-pity, and the storied musician tumbles off more than once. But at least it's we're talking about music.