Up the Bracket by The Libertines

Up the Bracket, the Libertines' debut album, came out on Rough Trade, and they could hardly have picked a better man to produce it than Mick Jones of the Clash. Cut at RAK Studios in London, it's the sound of Carl Barât and Pete Doherty, the band's two singing, guitar-slinging frontmen, tumbling over each other with John Hassall on bass and Gary Powell on drums keeping the wheels on, barely.

It's ramshackle and romantic, garage rock with punk spit and a very English sense of poetry, all sloppy guitars and bleary, brilliant hooks. It only got as high as 35 on the UK chart, but critics kept singing its praises, and it became central to the early-2000s British post-punk revival, with some ranking it among the decade's best. The cover art is drawn from an image of riot cops facing off against protesters during Argentina's economic crisis. "Time for Heroes" is the one that still gets heard.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.