Faults I May Have marks Dublin upstarts Ten Hail Marys’ first foray into non-single releases. The EP follows the release of a slew of well-received singles, with debut ‘Yours Truly, Little Pixie’ coming in late 2022, and the anthemic ‘So Young’ coming not long after.

The quartet have caused quite a stir already, having performed at Forbidden Fruit, Ireland Music Week and Whelan’s Ones to Watch. With a seal of approval from Whipping Boy guitarist Paul Page, and citing influences as disparate as the Cribs, Deftones and Depeche Mode, Faults I May Have seems an interesting prospect.

What we get on the EP is not quite as ethereal or gothic as some the band’s self-proclaimed influences would suggest. It is, however, a very self-assured handful of guitar-driven, melodic, hooky indie rock that offers a knowing tip of the hat to the turn of the century indie sleaze scene. While it all sounds familiar, it’s at no point directly derivative.

Opening with ‘I Still See Your Face’, a tasteful drum riff buoys a nagging one-string guitar lead and propulsive, major-key rhythm section, before dropping into half-speed, reverberating bends and a fuzzed out bassline. Samples of screen dialogue perforate follow-up ‘Anne Marie’, which sounds a bit like a more melodic Gurriers or Songs of Praise-era Shame.

Not one-trick ponies, frontman Adam Cullen shows off his vocal range and vibratos on the reverb and delay heavy ‘Echoes’, an altogether more introspective affair than what came before. ‘I Had A Dream’, meanwhile, drips with the sort of swagger and thirst that the brothers Gallagher haven’t mustered in years (‘I had a dream about you / Close your eyes / Do you still see me’). Closing track ‘America’ makes takes a couple of vague pot-shots at the doomed empire (‘Well let me tell you one thing / There’s no rules in America… Let me tell you one something about California / there’s no gold there any more’). It’s not especially clever, but it sounds big, especially with the tremolo-laden guitars underpinning it.

While not quite as subversive, confessional or experimental as the band’s inspirations or champions; Ten Hail Marys do put forth a slick, polished handful of songs here that hint at the big things yet to come from them.