Doherty’s downs and ups

Babyshambles

“Shotter’s Nation” (Astralwerks)

***

Babyshambles

“Up the Shambles: Live in Manchester” DVD (Eagle)

*

The Libertines

“Time for Heroes: The Best of the Libertines” (Rough Trade)

*** 1/2

Pete DOHERTY is Britain’s Britney, a tabloid fixture with a drug habit that’s kept him in court and in the headlines (especially when it involved his then-girlfriend, model Kate Moss) and sank the Libertines just as the band emerged as the great hope of British rock.

The singer and songwriter has a lower profile in the U.S., but suddenly we’re being provided a crash course in Pete -- present, past and way past. A new album from his current band, Babyshambles, along with a dispiriting document of the group’s early days and a wistful reminder of the promise that was once in his grasp form a bittersweet narrative that ends on a surprisingly hopeful note.

Doherty formed Babyshambles in 2003 as a side project during the Libertines’ chaotic crumbling, and things didn’t start promisingly. “Up the Shambles: Live in Manchester,” a concert film shot on its first tour and being released Tuesday on DVD, captures an absolutely abysmal performance. Doherty looks like a dazed blowfish, there’s no chemistry among the players, and his singing is a godawful, off-pitch howl.

That Babyshambles (now with a completely different lineup) has since managed to collect itself and turn out two albums and an EP is remarkable enough, and despite its leader’s ongoing run-ins with the law, the new “Shotter’s Nation” is the group’s best work yet, a collection of spiky guitar-rock that’s by turns garage-sloppy, pop-hooky and punk-snotty, with a loose and immediate feel and a real emotional punch.

Doherty isn’t exactly baring his soul here, but his songs (most written with various band members and a couple with Ms. Moss) have heart, and often evoke a vivid milieu of sordidness, temptation and regret. The “shotter” of the title refers to a drug dealer, and there are scenes of heroin stashes and the like, but more to the point are universal expressions. In the closing ballad “Lost Art of Murder” (with guitar from folk giant Bert Jansch), Doherty might be talking to himself when he sings, “Get up off your back, stop smoking that, change your life. . . .” And “Delivery” declares with vehemence, “Here comes a delivery straight from the heart of my misery.”

With its chunky chord riff and lurching, finger-knotting guitar solo, that track is a veritable homage to the Kinks -- and that band’s model of aching vulnerability and biting assertion prevails throughout “Shotter’s Nation.” Doherty occasionally drifts away and sounds disengaged, but he always comes back snarling, or caressing, as the case may be.

The effortless aplomb of the best moments of “Shotter’s” was second nature for the Libertines, the band Doherty and Carl Barat (who now fronts Dirty Pretty Things) brought to the brink of greatness. “Time for Heroes: The Best of the Libertines” comes out Dec. 4 to put it all in perspective, such songs as “Up the Bracket” and “Can’t Stand Me Now” serving as powerful reminders of the intensity and idealism that their partnership sparked.

In “What Became of the Likely Lads,” they sing, “What became of the dreams we had? What became of forever? . . . We’ll never know.” It’s a question that’s ridiculously pertinent to Doherty and Babyshambles, and one that, against all odds, they might be in the process of answering.

richard.cromelin@latimes .com