Pete Doherty and recent collaborator Frédéric Lo have released a new single from their upcoming album, The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime. Titled “You Can’t Keep it From Me Forever“, it’s the latest sign of The Libertines stars’ newest output, after the album’s title track was put out back in November.

The music video was directed by Roger Sargent and filmed in Normandy last week by Doherty’s new wife, Katia de Vidas. It features some references to the lockdown, such as an opening shot of stacks of toilet rolls and baked bean cans. The duo appear in a darkly lit bunker, only emerging outside into the sunlight at the very end.

Doherty says that the single was inspired by his sobriety of the last two years, saying “I’ve been clean since December 2019, so at the time of writing this I was really white-knuckling it with the drugs and feeling like would only be a matter of time before I went back to it. It hasn’t turned out to be that way, but there was that kind of kicking out at the new way of being clean and feeling like it was temporary.“

The album as a whole will feature music by Lo and lyrics by Doherty. The pair met back in 2020 when they collaborated on a tribute album to the late French songwriter Daniel Darc. Finding the creative spark around one another, they had a whole album written up within six months.

Lo said on their collaboration: “We were like forever friends. It was really strange. I loved Peter’s lyrics and the way he writes. It’s really modern and post-modern. I love Oscar Wilde and The Smiths, and Peter’s work is so expressive. I knew when I offered him some tunes that it was good material, so it was like one plus one equals three.“

If you’re looking forward to a whole album’s worth of Doherty & Lo, The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime will be released on March 18^th on a variety of formats, such as vinyl, CD, digital downloads and cassette. You can pre-order here and the tracklist can be seen below.

1. The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime
2. The Epidemiologist
3. The Ballad Of.
4. You Can’t Keep It From Me Forever
5. Yes I Wear A Mask
6. Rock & Roll Alchemy
7. The Monster
8. Invictus
9. The Glassblower
10. Keeping Me On File
11. Abe Wassenstein
12. Far From The Madding Crowd