As one of the upcoming powerhouses of pop rock music, Kids In Glass Houses have found success with their three albums - ‘Smart Casual’, ‘Dirt’ and the recently released ‘In Gold Blood’. Before their storming set at the ABC in Glasgow, guitarist Joel Fisher took time to talk to Air3 Radio about their creative writing process, face-painting and playing in front of 35,000 people in your home town.

Air3: So how is the new record?

It’s great, it’s been out since the 15th August so that’s given people the chance to give it a listen, so we’ve doing a bit of a road test tosee what the actual reaction’s been like, so far it’s been pretty positive and people are liking it.

Air3: Is Glasgow your first date?
No we started in Bristol last week, since then we’ve been to Norwich, London and Leeds.

Air3: How do you write your songs as a band?

It’s usually someone comes up with an idea at home and brings it to us and we just rip it apart and just piece it back together, that’s what the majority of our ideas come from. Sometimes someone will just play something at practice for a couple minutes, they turn out to be our best songs, you know, the ones you don’t spend too much time thinking about.

Air3: So do you guys just rehearse in the venue you’re playing or do you have a separate practice space?
We’ve got a studio back home which we spend most of our time in back home, just writing and perfecting stuff there.

 

Air3: For your music videos, the recent one ‘Animals’, who came up with the face painting idea?
[Laughs] That was Aled’s idea, the concept for that video, and we do a little bit with the live shows and fans do that all with the UVstuff.

Air3: Yeah I saw the fans outside with them.

Yeah they have them, we told them to do that.

 

Air3: Bands like Blink-182 or Metallica, they’ve been together for about 20 years or so and they still play songs from when they first started out. If you could see yourself in Kids In Glass Houses in about 10 years time do you think you’ll still play stuff from Smart Casual?

I dunno, I mean, there’s a couple of songs that we always sort of play like Saturday or others from the first album that I don’t think will ever be missing from our set, they’re like fan favourites. You know, we play the big songs that everybody enjoys.

Air3: On one of your tours you supported Lostprophets, do you feel you learnt a lot with them?
Yeah they took us out on one of our first proper tours, it’s good to see how a bigger band play to a bigger crowd. We sort of grew up inthe same area and stuff, but I wouldn’t say that we learn off them anymore, we’ve tried to just earn our place in music.

Air3: Yeah, you’ve sort of gone your own direction with your latest album. On that topic, what sort of direction are you looking to go for in the next album?
That’s something we never really know. What happens, happens. You know, we’re still fresh with all the ideas from this album. It’ll just take a while to sort of flush all those ideas out and come up with something new.

Air3: What is it like to be in a band, doing all these gigs and all this press stuff, does it ever get stressful?
Not really, a lot of actually just goes over your head. With the press, it’s just one of those things you gotta do. Every now and again you have to look back on the things you do and you realise it just goes completely over your head. It just feels like normal and natural. You just think back to moments when we played Reading and stuff like that.
 

Air3: Or whenever you played Cardiff?

Yeah we played with the Stereophonics like last summer and it was just awesome. I think the crowd was like 35,000 people!

Air3: What does it feel like to play in front of that many people?
[Laughs] There is just people everywhere you look. It’s just like ‘wahhh!’.

 

Air3: Do you get nervous for that or anything?
I never get nervous before any shows, like ever, I dunno why. Aled gets a little nervous sometimes, but I suppose that’s cos he’s the lead singer and it burns on him. As soon as you walk out there you feel automatically relaxed, you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Air3: So you’ve been together for years now, you’ve talked about the highs so what about any lows?
Yeah mostly they come from when we come off tours, when we don’t really know what’s next. But I mean you just gotta go take it in your stride.

Air3: So if you find you don’t have any ideas you just keep going at it?
Yeah we find sometimes it takes weeks and weeks and we won’t get any ideas at all, like a creative meltdown. But you just come up with something and it boosts everybody’s spirits in a week or so.

 

Air3: Okay, thank you Joel and I wish you the best with your show tonight and good luck for the new album and the tour.
Thank you very much.

 

The 2011 album In Gold Blood by Kids In Glass Houses is available to buy and download now.