Bio

Confirmationof Dirty Pretty Things' ascension into a truly great British rock act comesearly on in their brilliant second album, Romance At Short Notice. The song iscalled Hippy's Son, track two, and it is sung by Carl Barat in an open-throatholler, the sound of a man with demons in his past and who perhaps hasn't sleptfor days but knows just how to funnel such drama and exhaustion and visceralsentiment into something thoroughly, chaotically fantastic.

"I'mvirile, fertile, I scream when I come," he sings, tongue out, teethgnashing. Imagine The Kinks and The Clash combined, earthy and dirty, maybeeven flirty. It is a quintessential Dirty Pretty Things moment, and their mostcrowning one to date.

"Thatsong is autobiographical, I suppose," Barat says in a voice that staggersfrom a croak to a cough and back again. "It's a guttural spitting out ofangst and torment, a bit of complaining and raking over my past. Does it meanI'm necessarily unhappy with my upbringing? No, although I largely am - butthen perhaps I shouldn't be? It was certainly a colourful childhood, and soperhaps I'm quite lucky. I got a song out of it, if nothing else - though I dolike to think I got a little more besides."

He didthat. In a world where our current homegrown rock stars are invariably freshlyscrubbed, nicely turned out and fun for all the family, Carl Barat is a rockstar of the old school, a louche rabble-rouser who prompts fascination, wonderand awe in equal measure. He has a thousand yard stare, self-inflicted tattoos,and a way with a snarling lyric. He was once a Libertine before cementing hisown reputation, and that of his band - guitarist Anthony Rossomando, bassistDidz Hammond and drummer Gary Powell – in grand fashion: with Dirty PrettyThings and their 2006 debut album, Waterloo To Anywhere, a critical smash andcommercial success (certified gold) which sent them on tour around the worldseveral times over, where they consolidated all the promise that, previously,had so often threatened to spiral out of control. "Well, we tried,"Barat grins

Carl Baratgrew up on a council estate in Basingstoke, the parents he now sings aboutalready well into their separate, stop-start careers as an artist and CNDactivist. They split up soon after his birth, a factor which contributed to theaforementioned unhappy childhood but which, as he will tell you today,"I'm not about to disclose to the likes of you."

At schoolhe was endlessly creative, and intelligent with it. Having graduated with 11GCSEs, he went on to study drama at Brunel University, which is where he firstmet Pete Doherty, their immediately strong bond prompting him to ditch anynotions of acting in favour of creating a rock band instead. And what a band.Much has been written about the Libertines since - possibly too much - but by2002 they were already well on their way to becoming the most important, andmost feted, group of their generation, the twin frontmen a latter-day Strummer& Jones or Morrissey and Marr.

By the timeDoherty exited the band, Barat knew that this was an injury from which he hadto recover, and fast. Music was his vocation, his reason for being, and hewould have to continue irrespective of the negative events around him. For awhile, The Libertines limped on fulfilling tour commitments, but with the windso thoroughly knocked out of their sails, the now sole singer took a step backin need of a mental regrouping.

"Inthe end I spent much of 2005 convalescing," he says now. "Not fromany particular illness, just from all the... shit."           

Shortlyafter, he formed Dirty Pretty Things. Waterloo To Anywhere came out in 2006 andpromptly went Top 3, an urgent, gloriously messy and visceral album thatcontained some terrific highpoints (Deadwood, Bang Bang You're Dead, The Enemy)and a steely focus Barat had never previously been credited with.           

They wentout and toured the world, in the singer's estimation, "heavily, very heavilyindeed until, well, you know, what with all the pressures of work and such, weended up exhausted, knackered, spent, burned-out. Bad habits take their toll,if you know what I mean. We didn't sleep much, we stayed up late..."

Many in hisposition would have perhaps taken an extended period of time out, but notBarat, a man in thrall to his position as rock star, no matter how frequentlyhe may complain about it. "I went off on a three week sabbatical to Spainto recharge my batteries," he says. "Just me and my guitar in avirtually monastic cell. Did it work? Well, I guess so. I managed to get myselfback to a good place." Upon returning home, he was ready to go all overagain.

Romance AtShort Notice was recorded somewhere far away from the myriad temptationsof  London nightlife. The bandchose Los Angeles, very specifically, Barat says, "because I hate L.A. -especially L.A. on a budget, and we were on a very tight budget. We recorded somewherebetween Santa Monica and Venice (at producer Nik Leman’s studio), which isn’tthe glitzy part, it isn’t Hollywood, but in fact a million miles from it. Wherewe were was just ugly concrete jungle. Which means we had nodistractions."

It wasn'tall work, though. "Every so often, we'd treat ourselves. We'd disappearoff into the desert for the night, to places like Joshua Tree, 29 Palms, and itwas amazing, astonishing really. You wouldn't think that just two hours out ofa city like that was all this open space and arid nature. We'd camp overnight,which was, shall we say, interesting. We'd hear lots of wild beasties outsideour tent.”

Four monthslater, they reemerged with Romance At Short Notice, a huge leap forward fromtheir promising debut. Despite its geographical birth, this often joyful recordseems thoroughly drenched in British swagger, whether at the greyhound trackfor the chaotic Chinese Dogs or the bloodily rousing, first single, Tired OfEngland.

"Thatsong [Tired of England] actually came out of an argument I had with anotherband," Barat says, "whose singer was always complaining about Englandthis, British that... My viewpoint was pretty much that we shouldn't turn ourback on our country at all. We should be proud, we should be patriotic. It'sall we've got, after all. But that's just my perspective, and you don't need topay any attention to that. I've not become a preacher. Feel free to thinkwhatever you want about England. I'll be over here," he smiles,"doing much the same."

For all thevigorous clash and clatter of the record, it also reveals a hitherto hiddensensitive side to the singer. Plastic Hearts is an unabashed pop song with agorgeous, lilting la la la refrain, and Come Closer is an acoustic, honeyedlament. The North, meanwhile, is by far the loveliest thing Dirty Pretty Thingshave recorded, a sweetly maudlin slice of self-discovery, with lead vocals fromDidz Hammond, that runs: "I've been thinking through my drinking/Myconfidence is shrinking". As an antidote, Kicks Or Consumption sung byAnthony Rossomando, reels raucously, and even though the closing Blood On MyShoes starts off softly, it doesn't remain that way for long.

"Ithink this is a very different record from the first one," he considers,"like we've taken a major step forward and perhaps even made a betterrecord as a result." He shrugs. "At least I hope it’s a betterrecord. I only came to realise this the other week, but then I've been nervousabout it for a while now. I get this way – nervous - about all sorts ofthings."

He doesindeed, which is why Carl Barat really is one of this country's most intriguingcharacters, bullish and cocky and introverted and fragile at once, and anincreasingly robust songwriter, too, fronting an increasingly impressive band.Dirty Pretty Things have done what so many didn't consider possible: they’vesurvived the tabloid shadow that had for so long dogged them, and are nowmoving forward, foot to the floor, the music doing all the talking

"Am Ihappy?" Barat says, scratching his head, umming, ahhing and gazing allabout him. "Put it this way, shall we: I'm less unhappy than usual. Causefor celebration, eh?"

May 2008