Lapham recently has broken onto the cross-Atlantic indie scene as the sounds-and-samples whiz in Manchester’s the Earlies, an experimental, acoustic-electronic orchestral pop juggernaut of room-shaking choruses and acid-trip vamps. (The band’s debut, These Were the Earlies, was released in 2004 on 679 Records and last year in the US on Secretly Canadian.) Favoring the UK to his American Bible Belt home – and not because of the football -- Lapham would travel to England as often as he could once out of high school, staying overseas as long as his money would last, then moving back in with his parents in Texas.