"Carry On" to Stereophonics survives label chaos

Scoring a fifth successive U.K. No. 1 album should be a momentous occasion for any band, but in October 2007 the Welsh rock outfit Stereophonics wasn't able to savor the achievement for long.
Just as their sixth studio set, "Pull the Pin," topped the Official Charts Company (OCC) albums list, Stereophonics' label, V2, was integrated into Mercury Records following its acquisition by Universal Music Group. That left one of Britain's biggest contemporary rock bands effectively between labels.
Looking back, Stereophonics singer/songwriter Kelly Jones reckons the timing affected sales for "Pull the Pin." "Nobody was working the record," he recalls. "Mercury didn't want to step on V2's toes, and V2 staff were going, 'We're all being fired.' It was a s--t time."
Fast forward two years, and Jones says the quartet is "in a better place than it's ever been." His mood is fueled by the U.K. release of the band's new studio album, "Keep Calm & Carry On," November 16.
Mercury will release "Keep Calm" simultaneously in Japan and Australasia; the album will roll out internationally in February 2010, but an American release is yet to be confirmed.
The album's mix of contemplative ballads and fiery rock numbers pushes Jones' deep vocals to the fore. "I didn't want to make a guitar album with a big wall of sound," he says. "I just wanted to do something a lot more reflective and a bit more layered."
The act has sold more than 9 million albums worldwide, says its Los Angeles-based manager, Dan Garnett of Nettwerk.
Label upheaval notwithstanding, the OCC says "Pull the Pin" has sold 199,700 copies in the United Kingdom. But that doesn't compare to Stereophonics' 2001 best seller "Just Enough Education to Perform," with 1.8 million copies.
U.S. sales for "Just Enough" stand at 83,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, but Jones says the band has learned to live with its failure to crack America. "We just never had that luck," he says. "It would be good to do, but we don't lie awake at night worrying about it."
The band does plan to keep busy with extensive touring. Garnett says the "Pull the Pin" world tour grossed more than $10 million in ticket sales. He anticipates similar results from the new campaign, including a March 2010 U.K. arena tour followed by Europe, Asia, Australia and three U.S. trips.
"We're a live band," Jones says. "That's where we get our kicks from a lot of the time -- we're all kind of gypsies at heart."

STEREOPHONICS - PENN HELPS JONES REALISE MOVIE DREAM

STEREOPHONICS frontman KELLY JONES is set to add filmmaker to his resume after actor SEAN PENN offered to help him launch a movie career.The Welsh rocker considered a career as a scriptwriter before finding fame with the Dakota hitmakers - and now he's set to realise his moviemaking dreams after impressing Penn with a project he's been developing. Jones says, "I was at L.A. airport when I saw Sean, who I'd once met at a U2 gig in London. So I went up, said hello and told him all about a story I'd come up with called The Drop, about an apprentice hangman in the 1940s, based on a book called The Hangman's Tale which I'd bought the rights to years ago. "Sean gave me his agent's number and that was that. But then, when I walked on to the plane, I realised he'd really been allocated the seat behind me. When we got off he waited for 20 minutes while I got my suitcase from the baggage carousel so I could give him a copy of the story."

Keep Calm and Carry On to Stereophonics

Look, Stereophonics it's far too easy to be plain mean, but the title of the Welsh band's seventh album is an open goal. Taken from the currently popularised Second World War propaganda poster, the phrase reeks of ambition free, meat and potatoes, join-the-dots rock; they might just as well have called it Meh! or Shrug.
But enough negativity. It's no mystery what makes Stereophonics so popular: Kelly Jones's instantly recognisable Velcro rasp and his ability to write robust little rock songs with big hooks. What they lack in inspiration they make up for in perspiration and occasionally, as with the fantastic Dakota, they write a song so incontestably great it turns subjective critical opinion to dust.
Keep Calm and Carry On offers only a slight change in emphasis. The sound is leaner than before, featuring more electronics and fewer big guitars, and when it works it's pretty fine. She's Alright is engagingly stupid-simple, a propulsive and decidedly moreish opener that succeeds in pulling off the kind of louche, riff driven rock U2 attempted so disastrously with Get on Your Boots. There's a pleasing glam strain running through I Got Your Number, Trouble is a powerpop blast and the Motown thump of Innocent shows Jones once again obsessing over small-town nostalgia, the protagonists "holding hands, drinking cans in the orange light".
Much of the rest is solid, tidy and obvious, whether it's big ballad Could You be the One?, limper than weekm old lettuce, Uppercut, a poor man's Dakota, or Stuck in a Rut, a puffing bluesy rocker. In honour of their doughty, workmanlike album title, Stereophonics deserve doughty, workmanlike praise: they're a safe pair of hands, and this record does exactly what it promises. There are worse crimes.