http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7467-2003Aug17.html Libertines at the Black Cat Rock wisdom holds that a band can only go as far as its drummer allows. For the Libertines, who have Gary Powell providing the backbeat, the sky's the limit.
The U.K. buzz band needs Powell to be at his thumping best these days, and so he was at the Black Cat on Saturday. The Libertines appeared without songwriter and guitarist Pete Doherty. Last week, Doherty pleaded guilty in London to stealing thousands of dollars of equipment from band mate Carl Barat's flat, and later blamed the criminal behavior on addictions to crack cocaine and heroin.
The Libertines have also done away with the British military uniforms worn in past performances and in music videos. The garb, along with being kitschy cool, made for a nice visual complement to the quartet's retro, fuzzy guitar-based sound, which updates the garage rock of, among others, Revolutionary-garbed elders Paul Revere and the Raiders. On "Horror Show" and "Up the Bracket," both played early in an hour-long set, Barat, now assuming the musical and vocal duties once provided by Doherty, sported a well-worn leather jacket, in which he shimmied across the stage in perfect time with Powell's banging blitzkrieg. That effort, combined with the heat in the jampacked upstairs room, eventually got the better of Barat, so he doffed his tough-guy get-up and danced bare-torso during the fab "Good Old Days."
The Libertines occasionally obscured the melodies and clever lyrics found in abundance on the group's splashy debut CD, also titled "Up the Bracket." But at several points the band managed to be both precious and raucous; "Don't Look Back Into the Sun" and "Boys in the Band" had fans tapping their toes on one verse, then slam-dancing into the strangers beside them the next. Powell's pounding on the encore of "What a Waster," which recalled the thrashiest Jam, provoked only the slamming.
-- Dave McKenna
