To celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut album, Up the Bracket, in October 2022, The Libertines returned to their early years for this Apple Music Home Session. Hunkered down in their Albion Rooms studios in Margate, the band reimagined 2002 debut single “What a Waster”. Once a snarling, cursing blast of guitars, it’s been transformed into a plaintive, piano-led piece—while still retaining all its profanity. “The last 10 years, Carl [Barât, singer/guitarist] has been learning the piano,” says bassist John Hassall. “He’s a great pianist now. Lyrically and musically, it’s a great song, and just to hear it in another context, where it’s not got driving guitars over the top, sounds beautiful.” The Libertines also reworked one of Barât’s favourite songs from Up the Bracket, “Death on the Stairs”, in similarly slowed and stripped-back fashion. “I never tire of that one,” says Barât. “I think it’s just got such fantastical romance to it.” To finish, they took their latest run at the sea shanty “Sally Brown”, originally released as a B-side to 2003 single “Time for Heroes”. It’s on this track that you can really hear the fun that the four of them still have together. “There’s definitely a lighter approach to playing, a lot more space,” says drummer Gary Powell. “It’s really environmental. We’re probably getting on better than we ever have done. I didn’t even know we were doing it until the day. I was actually quite pensive, like, ‘So you’re going to give us no time whatsoever to record a bunch of tracks in a guise that we’ve never played beforehand and then just let the world hear it?’ But it worked really well because the energy between us was really, really good.”