For those of you that don’t know your scripture, you should turn to John, chapter 8, verse 7: “Let he that is without sin,” the Book tells us, “cast the first stone.” The suburbs turned this piece of timeless wisdom into a story about conservatories: if you’re in a glass house and throw a stone at someone, expect to get glass in your eye. Friends, we are today a less poetic society. Still, the pop rock of Kids in Glass Houses is far from tone-deaf on the prosody front: their latest record, released last year, was seen as a further maturaton of their sound. Take the supple muscle of single ‘Animals’: “Young and breathless, sings Aled Phillips in a searing howl, “Young and restless / When death collects us / History forgets us.” That is real poetry for the suburbs. On the other hand, they’re taciturn souls in person. If the name of their band suggests the boys are worried about casting stones, they’re choosing to pick their shots with care. Either that, or they thought our questions were really, really daft. Oh, wait …
What happened the last time you were in Camden?
[The guys just looked at us silently here. We’re imagining bad things …]
What is the one single most important thing to know about the band?
We’re called Kids In Glass Houses
You can have one artist, living or dead, on stage with you: who is it and why?
Prince. I don’t need to say why.
Recommend us a tune by a band other than you that we should download right now.
Sharks – Arcane Effigies
What is the most outlandish item on your rider?
A box of wine.
If each member of the band had to appear in fancy dress on stage, who would wear what?
[The guilty, wordless shifting we spotted in response to this question can only be because, on the tour for their last album, the band were spotted in American Revolutionary uniforms and Mad Max get-ups. We’d take the fifth on this one, too …]
Anything specific you want to plug?
Our album In Gold Blood is out now, go buy it.