Exhibiting the swaggering, fist-clenching, jaw-jutting air of a scary gang of overgrown delinquents, Republic of Loose weld belligerent attitude to real musical substance. This Dublin collective's debut album has the provocative air of a manifesto, rejecting all that is pretentious, ersatz and fashionable to carve out a huge slice of derelict musical territory and claim it as their own. The white man's disco grooves of late-'70s Rolling Stones (Goofy Love) and rocking funk of Sly and the Family Stone (Hold Up) are reinvented, as are the provocative lyrical brio of Happy Mondays (Girl I'm Gonna F**k You Up). Throw in some angular post-New Wave guitars (Kiodin Man), gospel harmonies (Something in the Water) and Irish-accented rap (Ride With Us), and the results are somehow nostalgic but original. Singer Michael Pyro comes across like Joe Cocker reinvented as a drunken Paddy at closing time. When not cursing his fate, he is evoking a kind of sweetly baffled soul, never more so than on the seven-minute heartburn blues Slow Down. Neil McCormick Daily Telegraph August 2004