Carl Barât: New Libertines music, solo material and the fight to save grassroots venues

Carl Barât isn’t entirely sure where he is. He’s currently caught up in a flurry of touring activity – at the time of our chat he is on a mini solo tour of grassroots venues across the UK, which is sandwiched between a Libertines tour that closed out 2021 and an upcoming summer 2022 tour to mark the band’s breakthrough debut album Up The Bracket. And in a hark back to simpler times, he is speaking to Headliner over the phone and not via Zoom, being quite literally on the road at the time of our conversation. We may not be able to see his face, but the charm and wit that made him one of the most enduring figures in British music over the past two decades exudes in abundance.

“It’s like living in a washing machine spin cycle,” he says with just a hint of disorientation in his tone. “I came off The Libertines tour, then it was Christmas, now we’ve done three dates on the grassroots tour,” he trails off.

Though the mayhem and the hedonism that defined The Libertines and the indie rock movement of the early ‘00s may have settled in recent years, there is still a sense of chaos that surrounds him. In addition to the previously mentioned shows, he is also preparing for a commemorative gig to mark the 15th anniversary of Dirty Pretty Things’ debut album Waterloo To Anywhere. And it’s not just the demands of performance keeping him occupied. He’s currently back in the studio with Pete Doherty and co working on new material, as well as a new album of solo material. And then there’s the matter of running The Libertines’ decadent Margate-based residential studio and creative hub The Albion Rooms. For now, we turn to matters at hand.

The grassroots circuit Barât is presently gracing is part of the Revive Live Tour, which sees the National Lottery partner with the Music Venue Trust in an initiative to help revive small, independent venues. As part of the initiative, The National Lottery is contributing £1 million to directly underwrite the touring and production costs of over 300 live performances this summer. Other artists taking part include Olivia Dean, Twin Atlantic, The Magic Gang and The Futureheads.

“There’s a lot to it,” says Barât of his involvement. “Firstly, I got in touch with the Music Venue Trust, as I’ve opened a couple of live venues myself in Margate. There is the Albion Rooms and an old one I’m resurrecting called Justine’s, which was always the go-to place in Margate but it closed in the ‘90s. The grassroots scene has been decimated by Covid – as has the whole hospitality sector – so this Revive Live Tour is not just to highlight the importance of grassroots venues but to try and get people back out and give venues a chance to not fold.”

While the devastation wrought by the pandemic across the hospitality industry has been widely reported, Barât believes the plight of the indie sector has not been given the coverage it deserves. In his words, not only does this decimation of the circuit ruin the prospects of the next generation of artists, it will leave a cultural void which may be all but impossible to recover.

“[Grassroots venues] have definitely been overlooked and they are such an important thing, culturally,” he says. “The mainstream is just a small part of the spectrum. The grassroots scene is much more everyman’s forum, and losing that means you have to jump to the drum of corporate events. It’s the only way anyone can really cut their teeth.

“That’s where we honed our craft, and that’s true for so many people. We used to affectionately refer to it as the toilet tour, we still do actually,” he laughs, “but places like that aren’t there anymore, like The Princess Charlotte in Leicester and the 12 Bar Club in London, there are so many. There was that smell of beer, the sticky floors, sweat dripping down the walls and the crowd virtually onstage with you. That experience is so magical and you can’t really get it anywhere but those venues.”

At the backend of 2021, The Libertines played a series of highly-anticipated shows across the UK, and are now preparing for a number of huge outdoor gigs to mark the 20th anniversary of Up The Bracket. The significance of the occasion is not lost on Barât, who readily admits that at the peak of Libertines hysteria, they’d “more likely be six feet under” than reconvening for a celebratory tour 20 years later. While much of the media focus at the time, and during the intervening years, was fixed on Doherty’s spiralling heroin addiction, none of the band emerged unscathed in their pursuit of rock ‘n’ roll’s darkest recesses. The very public disintegration of the band just two years after the album’s release surprised few.

“I can’t wait for those shows,” he says. “It’s going to be a massive celebration of that record, but also the fact that after everything we’ve been through we can actually make this happen and be there together on stage. That’s quite something.”

Perhaps even more exciting for Libertines fans is the prospect of new music, with Barât cagily revealing “we’re closer than we’ve been to new stuff happening”.

He elaborates: “I shouldn’t say that cause it’ll probably stifle the process [laughs]. It’s more likely to be next year when that emerges, but there are new songs, which is an amazing thing for all of us really. There’s always been at least one of us dragging our heels, but the last time we got together it was so natural. I’m trying not to give you any promises otherwise it’ll come back and bite me on the arse!”

So what has lead to this creative breakthrough for the band?

“Because we’ve stopped pressuring ourselves,” he states. “And we’ve been spending a lot of time together – it’s been about our friendship again, not just the pressures of careers, which has never inspired any of us. We’re so lucky to have a band of such eccentric characters, and even when we go off and do other things with other people, when we come back together there is still that amazing chemistry. When you strip away all the pressure, what’s underneath still has some life and some legs in it.”

If there wasn’t enough here to keep him busy, Barât is also in the process of writing a new solo album at The Libertines’ Margate hub The Albion Rooms. He doesn’t yet know when a new solo record will see the light of day, but he has been trialling new music at his solo shows.

“I’ve been trying to snatch as much time as possible at The Albion Rooms when I can,” he says. “The thing about lockdown is it’s such a weird time and it’s usually the job of the artist to step between the cracks of society and think about all this existentialist stuff, but suddenly the whole world was doing it! It was no longer the preserve of the overthinker. But that’s been really interesting. I’ve not particularly been trying to write things related to that but these things tend to come out on their own and you don’t realise what a song is about until afterwards.

“It’s so good down there, I go whenever I can,” he continues. “I can get some space and that’s where I’ve been doing 99% of my work. It’s great to have that retreat by the sea where you can get into the right headspace. The town is going through a renaissance and it has so much history and so much beauty; you have this dilapidated, faded glamour and it’s right on a cliff edge. And it’s got a bar and beds and food. We designed it to meet all of the needs of a residential studio.

“One day I went into the office there and on the camera, I saw someone playing one of my guitars on the floor with a spoon. I was a bit confused, but it was under the watchful eye of the engineer, so it made sense!”

Twenty years may have passed since The Libertines scorched the UK’s musical landscape with their knife-edge brand of rock ‘n’ roll, but the intrigue, and indeed the uncertainty that surrounds them, remains intense and beguiling as ever.

You can listen to an extended version of this interview below.