La Rocca

Irish piano rock quartet La Rocca are rooted within the indie pop underground, but their brash version of pop bombast is usually part of an extended strain of self-consciously epic rockers that stretches from Queen as well as the Electric powered Light Orchestra through U2 and Basic Thoughts to contemporaries like Coldplay and Keane. Equipped with the best, booming tone of voice of vocalist Bjorn Baillie and Nick Haworth’s twinkling piano, La Rocca are an indie music group with ambitious dreams. Although three from the four people of La Rocca — business lead vocalist and guitarist Bjorn Baillie, his sibling, bassist Simon Baillie, and drummer Alan Redmond — hail from little cities near Dublin, Ireland; the group in fact shaped in Cardiff, Wales while its people were participating in Cardiff College or university. (Keyboardist Nick Haworth, the band’s singular Englishman, can be from rural Lancashire, simply over the Irish Ocean.) Named following a club in the town of Bristol where in fact the group played an early on gig, La Rocca released a self-titled EP for the small Irish indie Moist Clay in 2003. That EP garnered more than enough interest to permit the music group to tour internationally, getting them to the eye of both Los Angeles structured indie label Dangerbird Information, which agreed upon La Rocca in 2004, and manufacturer Tony Hoffer (Beck, Belle & Sebastian, etc.), whose fascination with the group helped persuade these to leave the uk and proceed to LA. A re-recorded edition from the EP, entitled Sing Tune Sung following its essential track, premiered in Feb 2005. The band’s initial full-length, THE REALITY, implemented in November of the same season.