THE TAINTS

It’s been a fair old while now since The Libertines were heavy influences for emerging bands. Once upon a time you couldn’t move for acts trying to nail that Libertines guitar sound and that Doherty lyric.

Since then though, The Artic Monkeys and, increasingly, Mumford and Sons have been the order of the day for musical ape-ers. Those looking for a band who sounded a bit like The Libertines were just going to have to refer back to that band’s two albums from the real thing.

But The Taints could easily be The Libertines. In fact, while Mr. Doherty is currently serving time at Her Majesty’s pleasure for another drugs offence, maybe this band could fill the gap in the supply chain. Though maybe the word “supply” was a bit of a mistake there. Oh, you know what I mean…

The Taints have an EP out. It’s called “Gentleman of Fortune” and it features three songs: the title track, “Rotunda” and “Hospital Hill”. As with The Libertines and The Stereophonics before them, the songs have a localised focus. They are character pieces exploring the ups and downs (mainly downs) of the luckless – people you may pass in the street everyday.

And so in the song “Gentleman of Fortune”, we meet a beggar whose “losing streak ain’t on the cards/it’s in my head”. This is matched by the equally unfortunate Alice in “Rotunda” who “thought the make-up would cover the scars” of her life of booze and “walking around the harbour”.

With “Hospital Hill” comes the tale of a man unlucky in love, drunk and unloved, recounting tales of happier, if chaotic times. The Taints’ world is a dirty, grubby world filled with “stained lips whisper[ing] in station toilets”, drunk men “lying in the gutter” and cursing the rain.

It would be too easy to dismiss this band’s music – and lyrical content – as being entirely derivative of The Libertines if it wasn’t for the fact that The Taints clearly have a huge talent for song writing.

The three songs on the “Gentleman of Fortune” EP are detailed sketches of the lives of life on the wrong side of the tracks: twenty-first century musical versions of a Hogarth engraving. This takes them beyond being just another Libertines act.

The songs of The Taints are slick and fast, taking the listener on a whirlwind tour of the filthy back streets of their murky minds. Gritty, grizzly, great stuff.

Find out more about The Taints on the Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/thetaints

EP Sketch by Jack Moloney.

http://thetaints.bandcamp.com/