DESPITE the success of The Libertines’ reunions at Reading and Leeds festivals this summer, singer Carl Barat’s self-titled debut album, which was released earlier this month, marks a notable turning point.

The guitar-fuelled bluster of both The Libertines and Dirty Pretty Things, the band he formed after an epic fallout with co-lyricist and former best friend Pete Doherty, has gone, and instead there are lush brass and string arrangements and pianos throughout.

“I was very aware of the differences when I was recording it,” he says.

“I wanted to get underneath the veneer of guitars and the aggression they can sometimes bring.

"I tend to hide behind that, but I wanted this album to be more truthful, and naked, and slightly cathartic. I’ve had enough of the rage.

“Of course, once you get rid of the guitars, you have to fill up the space with something, and then you start thinking about the colourful range of things at your disposal.

“I worked with Neil Hannon from The Divine Comedy on one song and learned a lot from him.”

Elsewhere, there are nods to The Style Council, David Bowie, Morrissey’s solo work, Dexys Midnight Runners and, on tracks such as Je Regrette, Je Regrette, the smoky bar-room tales of Tom Waits and even Gallic love god Serge Gainsbourg.

Solid influences, and all previously unheard in Barat’s work.

“A lot of the album is about love,” he admits.

“That’s a side that’s always been there, but it’s never really come out with my music.

"I’ve just written about boys in the past. It’s easy to do that when there’s a gang mentality in the band you’re in.

“If ever I’ve written songs like these before, I’ve thrown them away for being too gentle or whatever, but this album was about me.

"I’ve written about other people in the past, it was time to turns the guns on myself a bit.”

It was possible to miss the band when they exploded in 2002.

Amid a flurry of gigs — they played more than 100 shows in 2002 alone — and plenty of headlines, they seemed destined to burn out rather than fade away.

And by December 2004, after Doherty had been ejected from the band, it was all over.

Many argue The Libertines are one of the most influential British bands of the past 20 years, London’s answer to the Strokes-led American invasion of the Noughties.

Whatever your opinion of their music, if you were of the right age at the time, it was impossible not to have been swept up in the soap opera-esque nature of their off-stage antics and their reunion was a good thing.

“Everyone in the crowd gave us so much this time,” says Barat. “They came to see us with love in their hearts. Their good energy made it happen.”

l Carl Barat plays The Deaf Institute in Grosvenor Street, Manchester, on Saturday, October 23.