Track Listing

1. Arcardie
2. Last Of The English Roses
3. 1939 Returning
4. A Little Death Around The Eyes
5. Salome
6. I Am The Rain
7. Sweet By And By
8. Palace Of Bone
9. Sheepskin Tearaway
10. Broken Love Song
11. New Love Grows on Trees
12. Lady, Don't Fall Backwards

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67519 in Music
• Released on: 2009-03-24
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Album Description
Libertines and Babyshambles leader, Spin cover boy, frequent gossip magazine and TV show paparazzi target. Peter Doherty fi nds himself constantly at the center of a hurricane of media attention, a windstorm of publicity that constantly keeps him in the public consciousness.

Grace/Wastland is a brave exploration into the eye of the hurricane. A stunning new album that goes beyond the news stories and photos that lays bare a man's soul, an excavation of a heart left desolate. Recorded over a month of sessions in autumn 2008 at London's legendary Olympic Studios with producer Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur, Cranberries, Kaiser Chiefs), Peter Doherty brings to life a collection of songs many which have existed since the heady days with The Libertines. Without the guise of The Libertines and Babyshambles to hide behind, never before have we seen Doherty so personal, raw, and vulnerable in his songwriting. Ripe with lyrical insights, Doherty's main themes are present and truthful - his troubles with youth, music, love and addiction are all revealed.

Adding color to Doherty's compositions is Blur guitarist Graham Coxon, appearing on nearly every track, instilling in the music his pedigree and refi ned studio nous. Scottish singer Dot Allison (One Dove) and poet Peter "Wolfman" Wolfe also make contributions to the record.

So, having laid himself bare, Peter Doherty has left himself open for critical analysis. Take this album for what it is and judge it on its merits, rather than the distortions of truth we and Peter are forced to endure. Think you know Peter Doherty? Listen carefully: this album is Peter Doherty.

Customer Reviews

Great, But a Little Worrisome
This is a rich, beautiful, muted, heartbreaking and occasionally exhilarating CD. All the media crap aside, Doherty is the real thing, an artist who can put deepest and sometimes his darkest impulses into memorable, if often heartbreaking songs. His singing is perfect: he never gets in the lyrics' way and his phrasing is totally his own. And there's not enough to be said for the production. It's immaculate.

What's worrisome is that most of these are old songs. I'd be terrifically happy to hear a dozen new songs, if only to demonstrate that Pete's still turning them out.

But this is a collection that just gets richer with repeated listening.

A soothingly gloomy album . . .
This is an album worth hearing because it feels very natural and intimate. Whether or not you enjoy this album, it will give you the opportunity to see the world from the sad, witty perspective of a person who excites the public's curiosity. I don't think the songs are fantastic, but they are good. After a first listen, the lyrics, insidiously hypnotic grooves, and jazzy changes make this excellent background music, especially if you are feeling contemplative and gloomy. Moods too subtle and delicate to survive an incessant backbeat are given room to sprawl out and linger. I found it cathartic to brood with Pete and indulge in his arty kind of melancholy.

A modern-day Syd Barrett
What do you get when you mix the pure, unadulterated musical ideas of one of the best songwriters of our time with a competent producer and the technical advantages of a studio? Clearly, a record that is downright magical.

Ever since I discovered Peter Doherty's music some two years ago, I have only been more and more impressed by the greatness of his genius as I listen to more and more of his music. He is a poet, a romantic, a bard... a modern-day Syd Barrett who has not (yet?) burnt out on drugs and, if this record is any indication, has a long and fruitful creative career ahead of him yet.

Many of these songs will be familiar to long-time fans of Doherty, but since they are solely his own work and not that of collaborations with musicians such as Carl Barat (as in the Libertines) or Mik Whitnall (Babyshambles), most of them have only been available to us fans in completely acoustic settings, on charming, low-key collections such as the Acousticalullaby sessions. (An exception to this is the powerful Broken Love Song, a collaboration with Peter's friend Wolfman, and I Am the Rain, half of the songwriting credits of which go to John Robinson.) Hearing them fleshed out by Stephen Street's deft left hand, Graham Coxon's accompaniment on guitar, and all sorts of other embellishments makes for a magnificent listening experience, altogether different from the acoustic takes we'd been familiar with - these may be the same songs, but they now have entirely new lives.

Songs on this album range from pleasant, acoustic ditties (Arcady, I Am the Rain, Lady Don't Fall Backwards) to sweeping, theatrical, string-laced pieces (1939 Returning, A Little Death Around the Eyes) and everything inbetween. Two of the album's loveliest songs are the quiet, almost heartbreakingly tender Salome and Sheepskin Tearaway - the latter featuring Dot Allison on backup vocals to great and poignant effect (make sure to listen to her take on At the Flophouse as well!). Palace of Bone recalls the American West when it was still wild and, for all the song's tone suggests, devil-haunted; Sweet By and By, on the other hand, reminds you of something you'd hear in a 1920s speakeasy or jazz club. The album's most unusual cut, though, is the brilliant anthem and first single, Last of the English Roses, reminiscent more of the haunting, textured genre-jumping of Gorillaz than any of Peter's former musical involvements.

Moreso than ever before, Peter's soul shines through these songs in a way that a listener with any sensitivity will find impossible to ignore, while sounding nothing like anything we've heard from the Libertines or Babyshambles (incidentally, the B-sides to Last of the English Roses sound exactly like we'd expect Peter to; Through the Looking Glass, one of them, was replaced in the last minute with I Am the Rain, showing that this shift in style was a most deliberate decision).

Grace/Wastelands is the Essential Peter Doherty, and currently the best official release we have that truly shows why he remains a force to contend with. Whereas it was once a genuine worry that Peter would not be able to dig himself out of his own addiction, a release like this portends good times ahead for those who appreciate his unique, spectacular art; with another solo album in the works, more work with Babyshambles, and even a Libertines reunion on the horizon, it now appears that Peter's greatest work is still ahead of him. It is a joy to not only be able to appreciate what we do have - as is the case with Syd - but look forward to even more marvelous things ahead.

Though it may in fact only be a forerunner, however, Grace/Wastelands is still a brilliant album, and one I would highly recommend to anyone who wants to discover for themselves what exactly it is about Peter Doherty that inspires such devotion. It's all right here: this is Peter's Madcap Laughs...

...or is it only his Piper?