The Rocca fellers

It’s the biggest cliché in music. The Next Big Thing. A band or artist who make you sit upright, tell your friends to stop yakking and give you tingles of excitement in your toes. And you know you’ve come across something really special when you sit with an empty pint glass for two hours for fear of missing a single moment.

Dublin band, La Rocca are on track for greatness and they know it. “The songs deserve to be big,” says lead singer and songwriter Bjørn Baillie. “Some of them sound really commercial and wouldn’t be out of place on 2FM.” However, so far, the only radio station to play them has been Phantom, a factor that has been in no small way responsible for the big turnout at every gig. “The thing I like about Phantom is that it makes music accessible,” says Bjørn. “You hear a relatively obscure band on Phantom and they can become your band. You can go and chat to them after a gig.”

La Rocca’s onstage presence blows bland

contemporaries out of the water. Nick Haworth, now sans Crispian Mills hair, bounces about his keyboard, banging his head and rarely sitting for more than a moment. His melodies are the

backbone to the La Rocca sound. That, and the driving guitar riffs. Bjørn Baillie is at stage centre, guitar in hand and voice all cigarette raw. His handsome face creases with emotion and he jumps a lot. Perhaps he doesn’t relish being the front man but something about it looks right. Behind the drums, Alan Redmond’s sweating for his coppers too. Bassist Simon Baillie is the least animated. All retro cool, he stands in the one spot, plucking his bass, surveying the crowd. He needn’t worry; these kids were won over long ago.

Their first single, ‘Dependence Theme’, charted at 51. Which doesn’t sound all that impressive until you realise they put it out themselves with minimal airplay. Road Records sold out. Publicity came in the form of a couple of friends, dressed as Barney and a Teletubby outside HMV on Grafton Street. “It was grand until Barney started physically threatening a few kids who kept jumping on his tail!” says Bjørn.

Let’s rewind. It’s 1995. Bjørn Anders Baillie (mother Norwegian, father Scottish) from Delgany, County Wicklow, sets off for Cardiff University Dick Whittington-style after a modest Leaving Cert. “I had a job lined up for Monday morning in Greystones fish factory so I decided to apply to some UK colleges. It turned out they were really impressed with the fact I had done five honours subjects and let me in!”

While working in the Union bar, he came across Nick Haworth from Burnley, England. “He was taking a piss against the wall outside and was so drunk he could barely stand. We sat in the car park for hours, having one of those conversations most people will only have a few times in their life.” Through mutual friends, they met drummer Alan Redmond from Dublin. The line-up was complete when Bjørn’s older brother, Simon, a graphic designer, strapped on a bass guitar and puffed up his hair.

Soon, under the name The Pull, they were packing in crowds at The Welsh Club, a venue that also hosted bands like Super Furry Animals. The lads spent two years in Wales.

“We had a great time but we never considered it home,” says Alan. “In Cardiff, to be a popular band you’ve got to have less than ten fans and half of them have got to walk out before your first song. We were pulling two or three hundred people to gigs and many people thought we were way too commercial.”

They changed their name to La Rocca, in honour of a Welsh nightclub, on arriving back in Dublin two years ago, and are rarely off the line-up at venues around the city. During the summer they played at South By Southwest, an annual music festival in Texas, where the likes of Badly Drawn Boy and Gomez have appeared. “The A&R heads all go there and it’s a real place where deals can be done,” says Simon.

The future is looking bright though the boys are being careful not to blow it. “We’re not planning an album just yet,” says Bjørn. “So many bands have spent time and money working on an album and it doesn’t do everything they thought it would. For the moment we’re happy just to release eps.” Most importantly, they like what they do. Bjørn: “I think we have a sense of what’s good. And we’re always getting better at

detecting our own crap!”

La Rocca’s new EP is available now in Road Records and other outlets or from their website www.larocca.ie