Carl Barat & The Jackals - 13/05/14

Earlier this year, Carl Barat took to social media in order to form a new band. People auditioned and he chose the final line up of The Jackals. I got the great chance to see them live a couple of weeks ago in Reading. They performed at The Bowery District, a small but great venue in the centre of Reading. I wasn't expecting amazing things because the band haven't been together for long but, as a huge Carl Barat fan, I went along out of curiosity.

I was not disappointed. They far exceeded any expectations that I had. The band were brilliant and Carl's energy on stage with them was brilliant. They played new songs and covered Carl's solo stuff/Dirty Pretty Things/The Libertines. Everyone loved the covers, they were played really well. But, I was amazed by how good the new material was. The Jackals are a fantastic bunch of musicians and I really enjoyed the whole set.

Some people have argued that Carl should not be covering old stuff still, he should be pulling away from his past projects. I agree to an extent. However, he has all this great material and the new band is very new so they would've been unable to fill a set of original songs. Fans of Carl love all his music so it's still good to hear no matter what. The audience seemed to love every second of it and so did Carl. The band had great chemistry considering the short time and how they were put together. I was very impressed!

We also got treated to some acoustic Carl at the end of the set which was lovely, as one would expect, a video here of him performing 'France' - one of my favourite Libertines songs:

If you liked Dirty Pretty Things or The Libertines or anything like that then this is definitely a music project to watch. There are some excellent original songs these guys have and if Carl doesn't get too distracted by The Libertines reunion in July then The Jackals could go great things so watch out for them!