Stereophonics certainly wouldn’t mind worldwide domination, but at this point they’ll be happy with worldwide awareness.
“It doesn’t make sense to us to be as popular as we are in certain countries and not in others,” frontman Kelley Jones tells Billboard.com. “People are pretty much the same all over when it comes to emotions and music. Now, at least, they’ll be able to get it pretty much everywhere.”
Stereophonics suffered a setback when its U.S. label, V2 America, folded in 2006 and the band wasn’t able to release its 2007 U.K. chart-topper “Pull the Pin.” But a new deal with Fontana/Universal’s Vox Populi not only put “Pull the Pin” out in the U.S. this week. The group’s previous five albums as well as Jones’ 2007 solo album “Only the Names Have Changed” arrive on Nov. 4, followed by and “Decade in the Sun: The Best of Stereophonics” on Nov. 18.
The best-of will come in both single- and double-CD packages, the latter a 40-track affair fleshed out with “band favorites, unreleased stuff, EP and B-side tracks” according to Jones. Both versions will include new songs — “You’re My Star,” which will be released as a single, and “My Own Worst Enemy.”
“We felt like (a hits package) was a good way to bring in all the record company people to work on a massive project, get ’em to know who we are and where we’re going,” Jones explains. “We also felt like it’s a way to celebrate 10 years of catalog.”
Stereophonics are on a world tour for “Pull the Pin” with a U.S. leg that wraps Sept. 21 in Seattle. Jones says the group has also demoed “about six or eight songs” for its next album, which it hopes to record in the spring of 2009 and have out in the fourth quarter.
“The songs are very, very kind of big melodies and have that euphoric kind of sound,” he reports. “I don’t know where that comes from, but they’re very uplifting kinds of songs. The band’s in a good place right now.”
