Music Features

He's Welsh, the band's from Brixton, and there are nine of them. Alabama 3? Go figure...

Larry Love

His press people say that when he laughs he sounds 'like a fat toad dying'. I try to make Larry Love laugh. He says he's more like a skinny lizard.

Every so often his accent sways between his native Welsh lilt and his adopted pseudo-American. He made the decision to sing with an American accent one drunken night at the very start of his career - and he's stuck rigidly to that - and to the decision to wear his trade-mark wrap-around shades.

The band are big fans of Cambridge - and clearly delighted that their music appeals to such an eclectic crowd. Larry tells us more:

The new album, M.O.R. was released at the beginning of September and Love calls it their least controversial - which probably won't exactly make it mainstream - but maybe it's as close as they're ever going to get - or would want to get, for that matter.

"Sell it to me", I say...

"It'll get your sweet pretty *ss moving from left to right and your gangsta husband will feel alright all night" - apparently, that's why we should buy it. I like to think he was talking about my own rear end when he came up with that one!

The acronym M.O.R. and its exact meaning is going to remain a mystery - it's open for interpretation, says Larry. I suggest "Mad Old Rockers". He hadn't thought of that one, he says. Luckily he doesn't appear to object.

But, with its less confrontational stance, could M.O.R be THE album to bring them their longed-for mainstream success? Larry has something to say about that:

With nine of them in the band, a hectic summer of recording and touring - there's got to be some tension among members, surely? And, although he's been quoted as saying that they have "incredible voodoo chemistry" on stage, I wonder what they're like off-stage. "Incredible vodka," he says. "And chemists."

I think he's joking. I'm not sure.

So, will they still be doing all of this in five years' time? Mr Love says, oh yes, indeedy: