Kids In Glass Houses - Manchester Academy 3 - 12.1.07
As we walk in to tonight's venue there's something clearly wrong that one of our brightest hopes in rock over the past decade are now playing to a barely half full venue. We're not talking about Kids In Glass Houses who are literally just out of the traps, but Hundred Reasons who seem to have has it all at one point shooting up to the Top 10 with their debut album only for them to struggle to scrape the top 40 6 years later. For the headliners it must faze them, but for Kids In Glass Houses they take an anything goes approach with the last two Manchester gigs being prime examples - in July they supported Lostprophets on their UK theatre tour before doing an exclusive intimate show to 100 people at the Star & Garter for Designer Magazine.
Your Designer Magazine correspondent had got flu up to the eye balls but despite being hardly able to stand we look around and realize we're enjoying Kids In Glass Houses more than the rest of tonight's audience. That's apart from the group of girls who keep shouting throughout most of tonight's set for frontman's Aled's babies. He resists the temptation to mount them on stage and gets on delivering a set of rock which like the Lostprophets and The Automatic takes it's direction equally from fine British pop music as well as American Rock rather than the full on onslaught of say Funeral For A Friend.
"Easy Tiger" and "Me Me Me" are prime KIGH's chunks of rock goodness and although the sound tonight impairs what are great songs there's still the indication that this band could become absolutely massive by the end of the year. Up till the last few weeks they've been handling business themselves and booking gigs around the country with some of the UK's finest unsigned talent, but this tour has put them firmly on the spotlight and with high profile tour supports and slots at Give It A Name their ascent is a given.
Yet again that rich water of the Valleys has brought the Uk another great rock band and while Designer Magazine caught on a few months ago, in 2007 so will the rest of the world
Alex McCann