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Waterloo to Anywhere is the debut offering from Dirty Pretty Things, the UK band founded by Carl Barât upon the implosion of the Libertines at the end of 2004. Waterloo retains the scratchy guitars and hopped-up tempos of the Libertines’ best rockers, and Barât remains an energetic singer and impressive lyricist. The best songs here — ‘Bang Bang You’re Dead’, ‘The Enemy’, and the pensive ‘Last of the Small Town Playboys’ — retain a roughshod appeal while falling short of the glorious heights his old band reached on their 2002 juggernaut Up the Bracket. Barât’s former counterpart Pete Doherty, despite his many eccentricities, brought melodic instincts and poetic flair that Dirty Pretty Things miss. Coming from anyone else, Waterloo would be considered superior pop-craft; unfair as it may be, it just makes one wonder what the Libertines could have been.
