This "You're fuckin great, you are" camaraderie reaches a crescendo in final track, Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, which seems to be based on Barat forgiving Doherty of his foibles.

"Please don't get me wrong, see I forgive you in a song,
We'll call it "Likely Lads",
See if it's left to you, I know exactly what you'd do
With all the dreams we had."

It's a beautiful moment, a beautiful end to a beautiful fucking album. "Blood runs thicker, oh as thick as thieves you know, if it's important to you."

Pete replies with a whimsical "It's important to me."

It's not a ballad or no shit like that, but it's enough to make a man shed a tear, is what. It's a stunning song, a summation of a friendship, a state-of-our-relations address, and it's going to get you all hugging like some motherfuckers off The Waltons what just solved some crisis about John-Boy caught one of them drinking. When this gets aired at festivals, if Doherty is indeed still part of the crew when such a thing happens, I swear to God, tears will fall, man.

The songwriting in general is unfathomably stronger this time around, illustrating previous limitations that you didn't even know were there. The band have never been strangers to melody, as anyone who sat grinning like a sociopath through Don't Look Back Into The Sun will attest, but here, things just soar, getting all Icarus on us and yet remaining unscorched.

Fuck you, Greek Mythology, is what The Libertines would like to announce. We will not only fly to the sun, man, but we'll grab hold of it and tell it how great it is and let it join in on a chorus or two.

This is the best album The Duke has had the pleasure of hearing in ages, and I've heard a lot of great stuff, man.

You may remember in the mid-90's how another British rock band, The Wildhearts, appeared on the news pages of Kerrang! every week in existence on account of we're breaking up, don't you know, never again will we play together, I hate that son of a bitch, no, wait, I love him, let's stay together. The thing is, though, for the most part, when those fellas went into the studio, they came out with shimmering glories like 29x The Pain or Greetings From Shitsville or My Baby Is A Headfuck.