Kids In Glass Houses

Kids in Glass Houses burst back onto the scene this weekend with three main stage performances at Slam Dunk Festival, we had a quick chat with front man Aled Philips to talk about their return, their new album and playing with Bon Jovi.


Music-News: So how's Slam been treating you so far?
Aled Phillips: It's been really good, it's just good to catch up with loads of friends and the shows have been good fun, we're just really hungover though.

Music News: Kids in Glass Houses have been away for quite a bit of time, is it good to get back out playing shows?
Aled: Yeah it's been a really cool show to come back to as well because it's quite a safe crowd for us to play to as well so it's been awesome, plus to come back and play on a big stage has been pretty awesome as well.

Music News: How have the shows been for you personally?
Aled: The first one was a bit rusty because we had loads of technical issues so it was a bit frustrating really because we'd been building it up beforehand in our heads but South was amazing, the crowd were great as well.

Music News: You've put out the track 'Drive' recently, it's very different to your last album (In Gold Blood), is this just the natural progression of things or a conscious decision?
We've kind of done it on every record, we've tried to keep things exciting for ourselves but I think the record on the whole is just a mixture of everything we've done before, it's not as serious as our last album.

Music News: You've not been playing any material off In Gold Blood at these shows as well, is there a reason behind that?
Aled: We just picked the songs that we thought would go down the best really and last time we played those songs a lot of people didn't know them so we cut them to make our lives easier basically.

Music News: How was the recording of the new album?
Aled: It was awesome, we worked with Dan Weller in Chapel Studios in London, we spent three weeks out there and he was awesome to work with. It was pretty painless as well, pretty much all of the songs were finished before we went to the studio so it wasn't a case of getting there and trying to figure out parts which is what we did on the last album so it was really fun.

Music News: So if it's not as serious as the last album, what is it going to sound like?
Aled: It's just really catchy in the way that our first two albums were when we focused on the melodies really so it's all up tempo pop songs really.

Music News: You've got a 'little' show coming up with a band called Bon Jovi, are you excited for that one?
Aled: Yeah it's a weird one, it's at the huge Cardiff City Stadium, we've actually done that venue before with Stereophonics about three years ago and that was mental but to play with Bon Jovi is just pretty crazy. I don't know how the fans are going to take to us but it's always good to play a stadium.

Music News: You filmed the video for Drive the other day, what can you tell us about it?
Aled: It's in black and white and it's just a really basic performance video with a party in a little dingy rehearsal room, it's just all really well shot. We recorded a different video for it beforehand which we had to scrap because it was so bad so this was like a repair job basically. It was the worst video I've ever seen, we trusted this director and he didn't deliver what we asked of him and it just looked crap.


Kids in Glass Houses release their fourth studio album 'Peace' on September 30th. Their new single 'Drive' will be released July 21st.