There’s something quietly miraculous about Felt Better Alive, the new album by Peter Doherty - not because it’s a comeback, but because it sounds like he’s finally come home.

For years, the press has framed Doherty as a fallen romantic hero: brilliant, erratic, and doomed. But underneath the tabloid tragedy was always a different truth - that he was never meant to be a rock star in the first place. He was always a folk singer, a songwriter steeped in the English tradition, closer to Ray Davies or Paul McCartney than to the swaggering indie frontmen he was lumped in with. On Felt Better Alive, that truth finally has the room to breathe. This isn’t an indie record. It’s an elegant, richly arranged chamber folk album filled with brushed drums, gentle clarinets, soft pianos and strings that hover like mist over a village green.

The arrangements are deeply textured, but never overdone, with space for the melodies and stories to unfurl. Doherty’s songwriting, long buried beneath chaos and distortion, is in sharp focus. His gift for unusual chord changes, vivid phrasing, and melancholic wit now feels clear and centred. The result is deeply English in a way that rarely surfaces in modern music. Not British, but English, evoking rainy streets and pub benches, with a moving sense of calm, radiating humble gratitude at his sustained sobriety. There’s melancholy of course, the years haven’t been easy, but there’s also good humour and charm. It’s warm, not dour. You get the sense he’s enjoying music and life again, and even when he leans into sadness, it’s held with a softness that feels tender rather than tormented.

The title track is among the saddest Doherty has ever written, a raw, trembling ballad as quietly devastating as an open wound. Soft and fragile rather than melodramatic, it lands hard in a way that only honest softness can. If the whole record lingered in that space, it might risk becoming suffocating, but Doherty pulls back and lets the light back in with lopsided pub jigs like Ed Belly and Fingee. Doherty’s charisma is warmer and more weathered than in The Libertines days, and it suits him much better.

Doherty has found a space where his gifts as a storyteller, a melodicist, and a quietly affecting singer can all breathe, belonging to a lineage of English songwriting that has little interest in keeping up with pop culture and feels timeless. For a man so long treated like a cautionary tale, the headlines waiting gleefully for him to fall apart again, this record is a glorious act of defiance. Not loud, not bitter, just quietly brilliant. At Sherwood we celebrate the art over the drama, and this album is a triumph on every front. If this is the sound of Doherty’s future, then he’s not just survived - he’s finally arrived where he always belonged. No longer a tragic tabloid symbol, but a thriving, graceful, unquestionably English artist stepping into his true role as a national treasure we can cheer on without hesitation.