The Libertines to celebrate 20 years of ‘Up The Bracket’ at Rock N’ Roll Circus Festival

The Libertines have announced a special show in Newcastle this summer for the city’s Rock N Roll Circus festival.

The band will headline the festival on Saturday June 11 as part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of their debut album ‘Up The Bracket’. The album was released on October 14 2002, and is known for tracks like ‘Time For Heroes’, ‘The Boys In The Band’ and its title track.

Rock N Roll Circus, set to take place in the Town Moor, mixes live music with elements of circus like aerialists, contortionists, stilt walkers, acrobats and more. Noel Gallagher’s High-Flying Birds have been confirmed for the opening night on Thursday June 9, and DMA’S will join The Libertines on the Saturday bill.

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Tickets for The Libertines at the Rock N Roll Circus will go on sale at 10am next Friday (February 11). For more information and to buy tickets, visit here.

The Libertines are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the album with a number of shows this summer. The anniversary gigs will kick off at Castlefield Bowl on July 1 before moving on to Hatfield House on July 22, Cardiff Bute Park on August 5 and Edinburgh O2 Academy on August 8.

In October 2020, Carl Barat spoke to NME to give an update on the band’s long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s ‘Anthems For Doomed Youth’.

“It’s been going well, but it’s been difficult with COVID,” Barat explained. “We started writing here, and that was going really well but John [Hassall, bass] is in Denmark and Pete [Doherty] is in France. It’s been a fucker to travel.

“We’re just waiting to get back on it, really. We’re all writing and it’s all positive. We’re just waiting to get back and lay stuff down, it’s just a matter of when. It would be nice if we could do it here. That would make a lot of sense. We’ve never been readier. We just need to get together and do it.”

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In other news, Pete Doherty and collaborator Frédéric Lo recently shared the single ‘You Can’t Keep It From Me Forever’ as well as announcing details of their new album ‘The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime’.

In an interview with NME, Doherty was asked about The Libertines’ new material and said it had an eclectic mix of styles in the same vein as The Clash’s ‘Sandinista’.

“That’s still the format that we’re talking about,” he said. “At the end of the tour we did that ended last month, everyone was really upbeat by the fact that we were all still alive after the various quarantines and John coming and going. We were all really upbeat about the future, so I don’t know how or when it’s going to happen but I think it will.”