 “THIS is the best album we’ve ever made,” coos Kelly Jones, describing Stereophonics’ forthcoming sixth LP. It’s a bold claim, especially considering how perfect their debut album Word Gets Around was. “Then again, we’ve said that about every album we’ve ever made,” he cackles. “There is something about this one though,” chips in Richard Jones, no relation to his bandmate. Despite Kelly’s self-deprecation, Pull The Pin is a great album, and arguably the best since their debut. The band released Word Gets Around in August 1997, to mass acclaim and commercial success. It was rammed full of kitchen-sink tales about growing up in the small Welsh town of Cwmaman and the colourful characters, such as the tramp at the centre of Looks Like Chaplin, who inhabit the former mining town. Its follow-up, Performance And Cocktails, carried on where WGA left off, but this time the songwriting was informed by the lads’ tours in America. It was, again, well-received and sold by the bucket-load, making the ’Phonics one of the biggest bands in the country. By the time of the third album, Just Enough Education To Perform, the tide had started to turn and the Press began knocking the band. As a result, Stereophonics’ fourth album You Gotta Go There To Come Back was on a hiding to nothing when it was released, and was almost universally criticised. In fairness, it is the band’s weakest collection, but it clearly didn’t deserve the savage mauling it got. Thankfully, the relationship between Kelly and the Press is much happier these days. “No, we haven’t argued with anybody for a long time,” he says with a smile. “We’ve had our ups and downs though,” continues Kelly. “We stopped talking to the NME for about four years, but we had a chat around the time of our last album, they gave it a good review and we talk when we need to now.” Sex. Language. Violence. Other? is the album Kelly refers to, and it did indeed get good reviews across the board. It also scored the band their first ever, and so far only, No 1 single with Dakota. That brings us to the new album, which marks a return to the sort of storytelling that made Kelly stand out from the crowd. Daisy Lane, for example, is about a girl who was stabbed on Kelly’s street, while lead single It Means Nothing was written after the London July 7 bombings. “I didn’t want to get all political with It Means Nothing,” he says. “I just wanted to say how these things affect me.” What was different this sixth time around, however, was the time scale over which the music was committed to tape. Kelly says: “Usually we just pile in a room and do it, but with this one we had two weeks on then a week off. “It’s very easy to get in the studio, grow a beard and get drunk for three months, so it was good to stop and start like that.” | 
