Oh, they sound like they really could be contenders, do Larrikin Love. Yes, the pale fraud Doherty gets a (by now obligatory) mention in dispatches, but the rough and ready London four-piece are eager to show that they draw from many other, far more interesting wells. The Pogues and The Clash are cited, Rimbaud, Wilde and Orwell are passed around the tour-bus and there’s even the prospect of a bluegrass/calypso/dub free-for-all in the air.
But while their debut album, The Freedom Spark, at times hints at echos and whispers of these and many other influences, only rarely does anything remotely resembling their (as you suspect) true identity break free. Which is sad because on tracks like the weirdly other-worldly ‘At The Feet Of Re’, they display a degree of imagination that’s noticibly absent in many of their peers.
Perhaps a stronger producer would have resisted the temptation to dress this endearingly ungainly crowd in one-size-fits-all post-Libertines threads – but hopefully by record number two they’ll have learned to trust their own judgements enough to seek out clothes that suit them better. That is, of course, providing they’re given another chance to shop around.