Large Plants

When Bedford band Wolf People crossed //Prog//’s threshold in 2010, it was like discovering a long-lost Vertigo classic, or finding that Jethro Tull had jammed with the Groundhogs. Adding supernatural folk stories in for good measure, theirs was a style and sound that inspired authors such as Benjamin Myers and Tom Cox.

With Wolf People on hiatus since 2020, it’s reasonable to say they’ve been missed. Luckily the band members have all been busy musically, and this is how Large Plants have emerged, the brainchild of WP vocalist and guitarist Jack Sharp.

“I had a dream that my late grandmother gave me an album and told me ‘you’ll love this’,” Sharp tells us over Zoom, “It was the most amazing music I’d ever heard and the artist was called Large Plants.”

March 2020 was the start of lockdown in the UK. A music performance lecturer by day at Milton Keynes College, by night Sharp was involuntarily a lone creator, but, brimming with musical ideas, he found a weather-beaten barn in a friend’s back garden in Bedford and spent his summer practising and recording tracks.

“I set up some drums, amps and tape machine and set myself a challenge: ‘Can I write and record an album in seven days?’ The answer was ‘no’,” he laughs, “But I did 15 demos and then thought, ‘I might as well finish this off’, which is what I did over the next few weeks.”

Meanwhile, experimental record label Ghostbox had been in touch on social media.

“I hadn’t logged into Wolf People’s socials for a year,” Sharp says, “and there was this message from Jim at Ghostbox asking if we’d like to do something. He was keen to diversify and had just released Paul Weller’s EP [//In Another Room//] so I sent him my tracks.”

These would make up a debut LP, 2022’s //The Carrier// and latest release, //The Thorn//. Listeners will hear similarities to Wolf People, and the 60s/early 70s psychedelic rock element is strong on both records. //The Thorn// differs by leaning into Sharp’s affinity with British folk music, approached from odd artistic angles. “I grew up listening to Captain Beefheart and The Incredible String Band and I was always interested in being wanting to be surprised by what happens in music,” he nods. “Prog, for me, is where you’re doing something which takes twists and turns and defies your expectations of what music should be. Those are the things that I always sought after.”

Folk music is also in Sharp’s background, going back to childhood when his mother would sing him folk-song lullabies, and, later as a hip-hop fan in his teens and 20s he sampled one of her Pentangle records, which opened him up to the delights of the 60s revival. In April 2020 he released his debut solo album, //Good Times Older// a beautiful, straight-up folk record.

“Rock and prog are really exciting, but one voice can be so direct,” he says. “Hearing Anne Briggs was a lightning-bolt moment; my melodies and phrasing come from English and Irish folk music.”

It sounds like we’ll be hearing much more of it in the very near future.

“Music is therapeutic for me,” Sharp affirms. “Since Wolf People began their hiatus I found myself just wanting to create as much of it as possible.” JK

PROG FILE

Line-up: Jack Sharp (guitar, vocals), Paul Milne (bass and vocals), Joe Wooley (guitar) Itamar Rubinger (drums)

Sounds like: Seventies Vertigo prog with a twist of acid folk weirdness

Current release: //The Thorn//, out now via Ghostbox

Website: www.instagram.com/largeplantsband

— Jo Kendall