With their new album, The Libertines are on course for their first Number One LP in two decades.
- READ MORE: The Libertines – ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade’ review: they’ve found their voice again
It comes after the indie heavyweights shared ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade’ last week (April 4) – the fourth studio LP from Pete Doherty, Carl Barât, John Hassall and Gary Powell.
Now, as per a new update from the Official Charts, it looks like the band are on track to top the album charts for the first time in 20 years.
The last time that they locked in the Number One spot was back in 2004, when Doherty and Co. shared their now-iconic eponymous album ‘The Libertines’.
Their last album to get close to the top position in the charts came in 2015, when they secured a second UK Top 10 with the comeback ‘Anthems For Doomed Youth’.
Currently, Earlestown band The K’s are in the Number Two position on the UK Album Charts, and are expected to earn their first Top 5 LP with their debut ‘I Wonder If The World Knows?’ and Conan Gray with his third album ‘Found Heaven’.
Elsewhere on the UK Top 10 are Feeder with ‘Black/Red’, The Black Keys with ‘Ohio Players’ and J. Cole with ‘Might Delete Later’.
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The news that The Libertines are on the way to their first Number One album in 20 years comes after the band unveiled their best dance moves on TikTok to help with the push.
In a new spoof social media video, Doherty told Barât: “Of course I want to get a Number One. It’s not like there’s a set formula for it.” Barât replies that he can’t just get the Number One “because you think you deserve one,” before the pair read over suggestions from their label after determining that “sell a lot of records” is not a viable option.
Reviewing ‘…Eastern Esplanade’, NME gave the album a four-star rating and wrote that “the sense of listening in on a band teetering on the precipice of disaster is gone, replaced by a more stable and necessarily safer version of The Libertines”.
It went on: “The results may be patchy, but this is not, and could not be, an album that rides the same intoxicating high as ‘Up the Bracket’. What they have done, though, is find their voice again, and, for the first time in over 20 years, The Libertines feel like a band with a viable future.”
Ahead of its release, The Libertines spoke to NME in October about ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade’, with Carl Barât explaining that the band were all “facing in the same direction” for this record.
“There’s been a lot of focus and everyone’s been working on finding their own personal place in the world as well. Everyone has very different lives and we managed to find something to unite over,” he said.
To celebrate the release, the indie giants recently added some new dates to their 2024 UK and Ireland headline tour – find all the details here.