The Libertines

Caird Hall, Dundee, December 6

It’s been 22 years since Pete Doherty and Carl Barat started making music together, 17 since the debut album Up The Bracket first established The Libertines and a whole half-decade since their full-time reunion has returned them to view.

Yet even to the most devoted fans, it’s probably fair to say that – when they initially split in 2004, having exploded from nowhere into a world of top-10 hits and a self-titled No.1 album in two years – many imagined they might not physically survive intact for the next decade and a half, let alone be back together and eagerly touring.

To the vast majority of readers, Doherty’s name will no doubt be far more synonymous with the number of outraged and head-shaking tabloid column inches he’s attracted, more than anything to do with his music. Having dated the model Kate Moss for a time, he was widely known as a prolific hard drug user, and often appeared in public and onstage – as well as in police cells – while under the influence.

As a contemporary of the late Amy Winehouse, the fear was that Doherty might also lose his life in similar circumstances. Yet despite his problems, he has continued to work prolifically since his addictions first drove the band apart; he has created six albums on his own, including three with his band Babyshambles, to Barat’s four, two of them with Dirty Pretty Things.

More than that, the legend of their band has held up in that time, and the qualities they brought now speak of a particular time and place. Between Barat’s capacity for catchy indie-rock songs and Doherty’s tendency towards Byronic romanticism, they drew in the same hedonistic working-class kids who loved Oasis.

From the yearning Don’t Look Back Into The Sun to the effortlessly catchy commentary on Barat and Doherty’s sometime relationship Can’t Stand Me Now, their music stands up today, with the allusions to a lost Britishness sounding even more like a quaint artistic throwback now. “I wanna go the other way (to Brexit),” said the internationalist Doherty earlier this year. “I want to bring down borders”.

Although the 40-year-old Doherty is still not far from the headlines (in recent months, for speeding, attempting to buy drugs and fighting with a teenager in France), the sense of immediate jeopardy around him appears to have receded. The Libertines’ 2015 comeback album Anthems For Doomed Youth was a hit, while the band – which includes John Hassall and Gary Powell, both there since the pre-fame days – continue to tie reunion tours like this around their own projects. What once looked like a group with no future is now close to becoming a nostalgia act.

The Libertines’ 2015 comeback album Anthems For Doomed Youth was a hit.