Stereophonics' Kelly Jones has opened up the band's album, 'Make 'Em Laugh, Make 'em Cry, Make 'em Wait', among other things in a new interview.
The album which was released today (April 25), has already been previewed with new tracks, 'Seems Like You Don't Know Me', and 'There's Always Gonna Be Something', and will be a follow up to their 2022 release 'Oochya'.
In a recent chat, Kelly Jones revealed that he was asked to write two new tracks for a possible compilation record, after finishing his 2024 solo album, 'Inevitable Incredible'. However, what started out as two tracks, turned into a full album.
“The record company heard a few of the demos and everybody really liked them and they said would you consider doing a studio record?”, he said. “The one thing I learned from the solo album was just doing eight songs was really interesting to me because it’s like four songs on each side of a vinyl, it’s about 40 minutes – which is roughly people’s attention span. So I just wanted to make something that was very concise, very compact, very melodic, very much how the Stereophonics sound in 2025".
“It’s got ingredients from everything we’ve done before but it still pushes forward to a place we haven’t quite touched yet".
Explaining how the title 'Make 'Em Laugh, Make 'em Cry, Make 'em Wait', came about, Kelly Jones added this: “One of the guys who lectured us when I was in film school used to scribble it down on my pages a lot and it was a phrase I’d had in the back of my mind for a long time. It’s basically an arc of a story I’ve probably used in setlists and stuff like that. You tell people a funny story, then you do something quite moving, and so on. The title has kind of a subliminal underbelly in a lot of the stuff I’ve done and it’s just reared its head I guess".
Elsewhere, Stereophonics have a number of Stadium Anthem tour dates coming up, including shows in Dublin and Cork in June, as well as shows in Belfast, London, Glasgow, and Cardiff among others.
Some of these dates, including July 4, 12 and 12 also happen to clash with Oasis's reunion shows in Wales, as well as shows in Heaton Park.
However, despite this Kelly Jones insisted that this does not faze him, insisting that he plans to make time for these reunion shows, as well expressing his delight that the band have mended fences and got back together.
"We've got a few clashes, so I'm trying to find a window of time. I spoke to Noel just before we went to the States, because I found some old pictures of us rehearsing in the studio back in the day. We were having a laugh about those and I think he was recording some new stuff", Jones said.
"But we play Finsbury Park when they play (Cardiff) Principality and we play the Principality I think they're at [Heaton Park], so I think I'm going to try and get to one of them, but I'm not sure which one yet".
On Oasis reuniting, Jones stated: “It’s good that they got back together. It’s taken a long time. The band aside, just the magnitude of those shows and the magnitude of people wanting to be at shows is an amazing thing for musicians to be part of and for them to have that second bite of the cherry after everything that’s gone on, it’s pretty amazing really".
