Kids In Glass Houses - Smart Casual

There was a time when Wales seemed to be the mass production centre of British music. Lostprophets broke through into the mainstream, Funeral For A Friend found renewed success and bands like The Blackout and Kids In Glass Houses exploded from nowhere to become flavour of the month with everyone from fans to fellow bands to critics. Although they all suffered the fatal flaw of sounding quite like each other, the latter stood out with their debut album Smart Casual.

Introduced to the populace with the self-indulgent sounding 'Give Me What I Want', Kids In Glass Houses have an arguably more indie sound than any of their peers, which manages to stop them being overshadowed by the more well-known bands. However, the real magic comes out when they start to get in touch with their emotions – 'Saturday' sounds raw enough to strike a chord with everyone who's made a mess of a relationship after a particularly heavy weekend.

They might still be lingering in the shadows of the Welsh heavyweights, but Kids In Glass Houses made a pretty good case for themselves with Smart Casual. With their second album recently released, it may well be that the future generation of rock fans will salute a new messiah of music from the Welsh capital.

KM