As I've been saying

that the tracks off the new Babyshambles album , 'Shotter's Nation,' are quite good and even brilliant, it's nice to see it get a 5-star review from the incurable rock snobs at The Guardian.

He couldn't have timed it better. The 'Pete Doherty gets it together' album arrives just as his position as Britain's favourite pop fuck-up has been definitively usurped by Amy Winehouse. This means that the second Babyshambles album, the oddly named Shotter's Nation, gets to our ears as an actual piece of music and carrying less media baggage than it would have at any time in the past three years.

Not that it is baggage-free. Shotter's Nation is about smack, crack, Kate Moss, tabloid infamy, junkies and their flunkies, and what we think we know about Peter Doherty, as it has to be. It's also about love, loss, the British urban landscape, laughing at yourself, great guitars, exciting chord changes, tight rhythms, the Stones-Who-Kinks-(Small)
Faces-Clash-Jam-Smiths-Happy Mondays-Stone Roses-Oasis-Blur history of Britrock, rich, simple production, songs with layers, a really good band and a singer who has relocated his voice.