Last year LeRiche introduced himself with the ‘Quiet Steady’ EP
which neatly encapsulated a gentle soul whose passion for music stemmed from an early age
stretching his fingers out on a six-string at the eye-opening age of one
and later learning his craft in the darkened bars at the far end of Canada. In fact he is quite possibly the first fierce panda act to ever come armed with a diploma from the College of the North Atlantic in Music Industry and Performance.

For this is a singular talent with a heart full of song
a man on a mission “with no end in sight”
but who knows that the goal is to continue learning
connecting and sharing all of life’s experiences through soulful melodies. More pertinently
this is a man who says things like: “‘Quiet Steady’ is a song that started as a poem I wrote on the bus…”

If all this suggests some kind of flimsy acoustic troubadour happy to hide in the shadows then LeRiche’s current (le)rich vein of creative form will nix that idea immediately: ‘Under Covers’ is a complex
fluid understatement of intent which curiously reminds us oldsters of the mid-‘70s when Hirsute Male Vocalists like Andrew Gold ruled the FM airwaves. The modern lonely boy that is LeRiche takes that warm
glowing template and underpins a soaringly downbeat chorus with contemporary beats and a sweet humility.

Nor is this any woebegone one-off
as ‘Under Covers’ is the first track to be taken from LeRiche’s ‘X-Dreamer’ EP
which will be released on fierce panda later this year and which consists of seven breezily heartfelt paeans to the pain of being pure at art. Keep this frequency clear…