And now...Number one... Larch! The lads began it all here with this eponymous (always wanted to use that word!) cassette. Having successfully extricated themselves from the twisted wreckage of Clockwork Robin, the Thrilling Threesome of Ian, Brendan & Pete promptly morphed into Larch (no The yet) & quickly fired out this demo. So quickly, in fact, that Ian didn't have time to ask me to do the artwork & did it himself. So quickly that the first I knew of Larch, was when he handed me this tape.

"Larch?", I said, puzzled.

"Yeah, man. It's the new band!", Ian replied, filling in all the juicy details I'd been out of the loop for.

Though composed of three leftover C.R. recordings, it did point out the direction the new band would be taking; less artsy noodling, more pop & most righteously rockin'. Free Kick would later resurface as a Larch staple, but Dragon's Tail & The Morning After have faded into memory in the lads' live set. Too bad, really, as they're both ace tunes, but they rely heavily on keyboards & violin, respectively, making them difficult to play live as a threesome. But no matter! Bigger & better things were looming on the horizon, namely....

Three groovy tunes, featuring Free Kick as the A-side, promptly retooled by the Lads into the inimitable Larch idiom. Even more notably, the flip side unleashed the first Larch originals, including the staggering Anvil Chorus. Released on Flamingo, it got a fair amount of college airplay, especially in the Midwest. Note the embryonic, first-generation Larch logo. And, that at the label's suggestion, the lads became The Larch.

Flamingo was a truly groovy little label, full of great pop acts, which included our pal Paula Carino's now defunct Regular Einstein. I mean, they actually had the courage to put out vinyl (remember that, kids?) in 1998, fer cryin' out loud. Sadly, Flamingo lost out to financial problems not long after the single's release. Which left the Lads to self-release all of their subsequent Brit-pop broadsides. Beginning with...

Perhaps the lads most mysterious release. Another demo, actually the single with Bombshell Star replacing Free Kick. Very rare (even I don't have a copy), so unless you're a record company A&R type or Jim Santos (of Demo Universe), you probably never saw this one.

Featuring Ian's haunting ode to The Princess of Hearts, this & Nobody Expects... would eventually form the core of the first album.

The mystery is where it fits chronologically. To the best of yer humble webmeister's admittedly creaky recollection, it should fall in here. But Ian (who did the art on this one, as well) used the back cover I did for Nobody Expects... & just changed the song titles and added some other collagey bits. Hmmmm. Maybe all those crop circles we used in the early logos set up some sort of temporal warp, scrambling our timeline. Somebody get Erich Von Danikken on the phone. On second thought, don't.

My best guess is: this was a cassette first, then later (after N. E...), Ian redid it into a CD, thus explaining the time-warped art.

Anyway, either before or after this came.....

Temporarily succumbing to a case of gratuitous Pythonisms, the Lads came up with this little gem. Featuring three more new tracks, they were now a fully cohesive group, with Matt Barton joining to replace the recently departed Brendan (departed the band, that is. He's not dead yet. Oh, what a giveaway!). And, you'll note, the logo's now all grown up into it's current, internationally renowned form.

Anyway, here you can now also hear the new band's identity emerging. Grown out of Clockwork Robin's late period pop, the mix now expanded to include ska (the peppy Barracuda Dogfish) & semi-epic ballads (the sublime Old Year's Night). Joined by one their finest (in my humble opinion) bits of strychnine pop, The Persuaders, the Lads were now set up to push on towards a real full-blown album, Which would become....

The full album debut for the Lads, Royal Peculier decisively proved that scurrilous rumours of pop music's demise were greatly exaggerated. Their finest bunch of songs to that point, things just got better from there; masterfully produced by the Fourth Larch Lad, Ross Bonadonna & professionally mastered, they had never sounded better. Aiding & abetting the lads on this caper were:

Lisa Brewer's bassoon & recorder
Ross' guitar, keyboards, sax, & lusty Oi!!!'s,
Larch Lad emeritus Brendan O'Connor's bass & backing vocals from the old days

As critic extrordinaire Jim Santos summed it up, "A new Larch album is always cause for celebration in the Universe". What more can I add? Except that having accomplished this, the Lads (& new Lass Liza) proceeded to push forward into even newer territory with...

1. Sister Candicorn
2. Halo Blend
3. Barracuda Dogfish
4. Body Heat
5. Spinning Jenny
6. Bombshell Star
7. Crashing Main St.
8. Free Kick
9. Anvil Chorus
10. The Persuaders
11. Old Years Night

Download your very own Royal Peculier label (384k), suitable for printing out & slapping on your favorite bottle of brew. Guaranteed to enhance the full Larch experience. (Ale not included.)

The CD which inspired indiemusic.com to enthuse, "If you never quite accepted Oasis, this is your band." More than happy to accept the mantle of the Anti-Oasis, the Lads & Lass once again pushed the music out into new realms. Larching into the new millennium with guitars & sarcasm blazing, the disc explores this odd moment our new technology happy society has come to. At least it's put to good use as wielded here: while the arrangements are far more ambitious than on the previous CDs, the humans are still fully in control. The band has never been tighter & continues to add more diverse instruments to the mix. Ross, as always, continues to amaze, not only as the world's coolest producer, but also with his trippy remix of Prospect Park.

All of which, has formed the basis of the new album ...