Tadpoles' 1994 album He Fell Into The Sky is an effective mix of psychedelia, shoegazing and non-shoegazer-style noisepop. This was followed in 1996 by Far Out, which is a similarly atmospheric cross between noisepop and psychedelic music, although it sounds less influenced by shoegazer bands. Tadpoles are psychedelic but are definitely not a carbon copy of anything from the 60s - this is a more modern type of psychedelia. There is also an extra track on the CD version of this, Old Dirty Mushrooms, which is quirkier and more obviously psychedelic than the rest of the album. Know Your Ghosts came next, a 4 track CDEP. The title track is from their album Smoke Ghost, and is in the familiar Tadpoles indie-pop-psych-rock style, but with a touch more quirkiness than usual. Judas, This Is Jesus is a mainly instrumental track but also has a recording of someone saying "Judas, this is Jesus, it's raining silver, help me", repeated over and over. This CD also features a different version of Snapper, from the He Fell Into The Sky album, and a song called Oops, I Lost Your Mind, which is not a Tadpoles composition but is by Tony Mentzer, who also sings lead vocals on this track.

Smoke Ghost, from 1998, still shows a noisepop influence but this album includes several tracks which explain why a lot of reviewers class the band as spacerock. The spaceyness isn't present on every track though, and the tracks that are spacey do avoid the cliches that crop up in a lot of spacerock. Tadpoles are definitely not a stereotypical spacerock band. Happy Feet is certainly not spacerock; it's a happy sounding pop song with jangly guitar. A handful of other tracks on here are jangly and more pop than the material on the previous albums as well. Next was a live album, recorded at the Terrastock festival. The original versions of these 7 tracks can be found on Far Out, Smoke Ghost and He Fell Into The Sky, but live they have a heavier sound than much of their studio stuff. This is the album which is, overall, most worthy of the 'spacerock' tag, but again this avoids the stereotypes that are often found in this genre.

All the above CDs are out on the band's own Bakery label, but the 1999 album Whirlaway is a joint release between Bakery and the Australian label Camera Obscura. This is the most diverse of the Tadpoles' albums; on Frances The Dancer they're doing something vaguely similar to the band Beautiful Happiness (whatever happened to them?), Lyman Bostock is a fairly heavy (but melodic) track which mixes indie-rock and the noisier end of psychedelia, Smile If You've Crossed Over has elements that sound fairly experimental, but it still has a discernible melody, and there are other songs which are rather poppy but with a space/psych feel. I'd say this is the most psychedelic album by this band. Unlike some bands who run out of ideas after the first album, Whirlaway is quite possibly the best thing the Tadpoles have done (although their earlier stuff was also pretty impressive, particularly the extremely catchy song Nazareth). I've just read on their website ( www.tadpoles.com) that the band have now split up, but Bakery Records will still be kept alive and there are plans for a 'best of' album by the Tadpoles on the label. They also intend to make previously unreleased live/demo/rehearsal material available on the Internet.

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