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The Libertines, on their debut album Up the Bracket album (issued in the UK, October, 2002, and March, 2003 in America), deliver well-written punk-pop in a ragged-but-right style that teases with echoes of The Clash, The New York Dolls and Pavement. Avoiding the polar pitfalls of Green Day's predictability and Modest Mouse's endless demands on the listener's patience, they thread the skinny needle of superb garage rock, coming out the other side grinning, sweaty, and deserving of your buying them a Guinness.

Record collectors are demented and sad-- obsessive- compulsive freaks that only have one thing on their minds; the next record they need. You see, "want" is only for the completely normal and well adjusted individual who went to the mall to pick up U2's latest but came home happily instead with a totally rippin' new shirt from Old Navy. Lucky shit- bet he even has a girlfriend and a cool car.

This record reminds me of the first Talking Heads album, '77 The music kicks in a stilted sort of way; the front man is more weird than powerful, but draws skillfully on the music for his punch, so that his oddball catchphrases (many of them about everyday things like cities, buildings, and doing a good job, lending a certain Richard Scarry earnestness) are driven into your head. He doesn't exactly chant, but it feels like he does. The album is actually more “good” than it is “fun to listen to”-I keep having to make myself put it on. But I'm often glad I did. But I don't listen for all that long.

When your wildly influential band dissolves after five albums and a decade of indie acclaim, separating yourself from your past is near impossible. If any band defined the old “critically adored, publicly dismissed” adage, it was Pavement. If you came of age in the sixties or seventies it’s probably hard to believe lines like “Lies and betrayals/ Fruit-covered nails/ Electricity or lust/ Won’t break the door” have had as much impact on a certain generation as anything by Dylan or The Beatles; but it’s true. Sure, it happened to be Generation X, but ask anyone who uses the words “indie”, “alternative”, or “college rock” more than once a month to name the best album of the nineties, and you’re bound to hear a whole lot of “Like, wow…that’d have to be, like, Slanted & Enchanted dude.”