Album Review: Romance At Short Notice by Dirty Pretty Things

For most of Romance at Short Notice, Carl Barat and the rest of Dirty Pretty Things seem determined to move as far past the lingering ghosts of the Libertines and their debut album, Waterloo to Anywhere, as possible. Romance at Short Notice isn't just much more polished than the band's scrappy debut, it's also much more eclectic -- to a fault. The album crashes in on "Buzzards and Crows," a brooding manifesto against "a scene self-obsessed" embellished with carnivalesque organs, a flat-lining heart monitor, and what sounds like an angry mob; it's followed by "Hippy's Son," where Barat tears down any leftover traces of '60s peace and love with snarling invective and guitars.

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DIRTY PRETTY THINGS Romance At Short Notice (Mercury) Rating: NN While his former bandmate Pete "doomed" Doherty swings between rehab and prison, Carl Barat's busied himself laying the ghost of the Libertines to rest. On his second Dirty Pretty Things excursion, he all but achieves it. But when you're replacing vital infectious riffs with conventional verse-chorus indie rock and grade school poetry, it's hardly a positive thing.

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