Perhaps the key era for the UK’s fertile post-punk revival was around 2005/2006; today, some of the scene’s key bands are are on hiatus (in the case of Bloc Party) or disbanded (in the case of The Rakes). Even your friendly neighbourhood music writer least positively disposed to a need for “reference points” feels obliged to observe that the latter band seem to be a major influence on What Would Jesus Drive, releasing their Fragile Mansions EP while manoeuvring to put our their debut full-length album in March.

Whilst WWJD spin tales of all that is hollow and mundane in modern life as The Rakes did, they do it with a fuller, cleaner and less wiry guitar-led sound; in addition, they tend to find humour where Alan Donohue’s men found themselves staring into booze-drenched oblivion. “I’m tired of the boys I’m with getting way too pissed on the way to the nightclub”, complains Tim Box on ‘Dirty Old Week’, “I’m tired of the girls I’m with leaning for a kiss when they’ve only just thrown up”. Theirs is far from an entirely original point, but WWJD’s infectiousness is evidence enough that it’s a point which still has some weight behind it.

The last of these four tracks raises some eyebrows, however. ‘Victory’ bleeds out the “nervous tension” which fuelled the first three tracks and leaves Amy Casey grappling to make something of a drab set of lyrics with nothing but an ominous bass figure to prop her up. At well under three minutes this curious exercise in deliberate letdown still drags, leaving us scratching our heads as opposed to hitting repeat, which we might well have been doing had something more propulsive been put in its place.

Hopefully now quite experienced with the EP format, the real test of What Would Jesus Drive’s abilities will be – as ever – their transition to the LP format, something which neither the band nor their listeners have long to wait for. The band’s sound, sometimes derivative as it is, packs an undeniable punch but they’ll need to increase their variety and avoid making minimalist missteps if they’re to capitalise on this display.