Remember The Commitments? They were the Dublin white soulsters created by best-selling author Roddy Doyle in 1987. Four years later, director Alan Parker brought them to the screen and members of the cast went on to form a touring band.

Well, despite their name suggesting an affinity for the baggy Madchester scene, Republic Of Loose are the 21^st century version of Doyle’s sensations. Except where The Commitments styled themselves as “the world’s hardest-working band”, RoL appear as interested in play if events following their recent Barfly gig are anything to go by. An impromptu aftershow party on the tour bus parked directly outside the venue resulted, first, in the police cautioning the band for a range of offences including drunk and disorderly and disturbing the peace and, later, two groupies waking up knickerless the following day as the Loose bus hit Glasgow.

Another crucial difference is that whilst the Republic share influences with The Commitments in James Brown and The Neville Brothers, they are not a covers band. It follows on then that their gigs aren’t the musical equivalent of a mausoleum. For that alone, they deserve the tag “saviours of soul” far more than their rather more manufactured predecessors.

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