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Stereophonics New Album Straight In At Number One?

Monday 2nd June 2003

Stereophonics released their fourth album ‘You Gotta Go There To Come Back‘ today, and it seems more than likely that it will debut at number one in the album‘s chart. For Kelly Jones, the album is another building block of the grand plan. "I always wanted to be in the biggest band in the world." But he‘s adamant that, for Stereophonics, this time the rhetoric comes second to the record: "The main thing was to make an album that comes from the heart. I‘ve never felt so confident about a piece of work before."

After finishing the ‘Just Enough Education to Perform‘ tour and headlining at UK summer festivals Glastonbury, V002 and Slane Castle, Kelly, Stuart Cable and Richard Jones already had an albums worth of new material as Kelly had been writing while on the road. Kelly began turning them into full working demos in a small studio in Fulham, London, working with the band‘s ‘live recording‘ engineer Jim Lowe, and this new experience lead Kelly to actually producing their new album. Says Kelly: "I started by going into the studio, from 10am to 6pm and aimed to come out at the end of the day with a finished track. I‘d always heard stories of writers doing this ... It not only focused my writing, it lead me to finding the direction and sound of the new record. I loved the freedom and the problem solving, y‘know, trying to get the songs to sound exactly the way I heard them in my head ... It just naturally lead to me carrying on in that fashion and producing the record."

The band made the decision to get things back together and hold the rehearsals for the album in Stuart‘s garage. It would be the first time the band played the new songs Kelly had been demoing all summer and it would be the first time the band had been together as just the three of them, with no crew, or managers, for almost six years. It goes without saying it was not before time and it genuinely brought that band closer together as friends and musicians. When the band were later asked to describe the making of the album which began recording in late September 2002, the answer was simple: "The best time we‘ve ever had in the studio! We feel like we felt before we had a record deal. It was a wild time. It was a creative time. We feel happy with ourselves and each other. We feel confident that this is our best record yet, and as long as we can keep making that progress from record to record, and develop our sound on each record, and keep it exciting and fresh, then in the long run we will naturally achieve our goals."

Each Stereophonics record has developed in style and increased in sales. ‘Just Enough Education to Perform‘ sold over 2.3 million albums worldwide including more than 1.6 million in the UK alone. The resulting sell-out UK arena tour helped all three albums to re-enter the Top 50 UK album chart at the same time in 2002.

‘You Gotta Go There To Come Back‘ was finished recording by early December 2002 and it was mixed in LA in January 2003 by Jack Joseph Puig at Oceanway Studios, all in all a pretty quick process. "We wanted to make a more dynamic, more varied and soulful record" says the band. "We felt a lot of today‘s radio formatting has resulted in everyone‘s records sounding the same. No individuality: all for the sponsors lets say and nothing from the heart. Every note and lyric on this record is from the heart. Its important that people remember music is for the soul, its not about celebrity and fame. I suppose that was our main focus for the record."

‘Madame Helga‘ the first UK single was released May 19th. Track listing is as follows:

Help Me (She‘s Out Of Her Mind) ~ Jealousy ~ Maybe Tomorrow ~ Climbing The Wall

Madame Helga ~ I‘m Alright (You Gotta Go There To Come Back) ~ Since I Told You It‘s Over ~ Getaway

You Stole My Money Honey ~ Rainbows And Pots Of Gold ~ Nothing Precious At All

I Miss You Now ~ High As The Ceiling

Stereophonics will play songs from ‘You Gotta Go There To Come Back‘ on their massive winter UK tour. The dates, which include a night at London‘s Earls Court, start in Newcastle on 8th November and culminate with a show at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on December 20th - Stereophonics are the first band to play there twice. Full dates follow:

November

Saturday 8th	Newcastle Arena
Sunday 9th	Sheffield Arena
Monday 10th	Hull Arena
Wednesday 12th	Exeter Westpoint Arena
Thursday 13th	Plymouth Pavilions
Saturday 15th	Nottingham Arena
Sunday 16th	Birmingham NEC
Wednesday 19th	Manchester Evening News Arena
Saturday 22nd	Glasgow SECC
Monday 24th	Aberdeen AECC