PHONIC YOUTH

Forget Bristol, forget Manchester. The hot spot of the moment - as far as the music industry is concerned, anyway - is Wales.

Wales, you say? Leeks? Rugby players with operatic voices singing Christmas carols in six-part harmony? Tom Jones? Unpronounceable town names? A ferry port on the way to London?

Far from it. The latest band to emerge from the newly trendy principality, following hard on the heels of Manic Street Preachers, is a three-piece outfit from the tiny South Wales village of Cwmaman. They're called the Stereophonics, they were the first act to be signed to Richard Branson's new V2 label, they've had a UK Top 40 hit, their debut album is due out in August, and they are going to be big, big, big.

Or so everyone seems to think. Certainly, they've got what it takes: youth, naivete, a good-sized dash of arrogance, a raspy-voiced singer with an ear for a catchy pop melody and a knack for penning simple, odd little lyrics on subjects drawn from his own experience - minding the fruit and veg stall ('More Life In A Tramp's Vest'), watching people get pissed and misbehave at weddings ('Too Many Sandwiches'), fantasising about the girl in the car next to you while you're stuck in a traffic jam ('Traffic').

They've got the requisite rave review from NME - "Mountaintop passion landing on your head like an avalanche of sleeves with hearts on" (match that metaphor!) - and they're likeable lads, if a tad ingenuous about how the music industry operates.

"We were sending tapes away every week with pieces of cake and stuff, but nobody gave us the time of day," says frontman Kelly Jones, sounding touchingly surprised and indignant that this should be the case. We - the band, V2's Andy McIntosh and yours truly - are sitting in Conway's Pub in Aberdare, the market town where Kelly used to man that aforementioned fruit and veg stall. Not so long ago, the band were refused service in this pub on the grounds that their hair was too long. These days it's short, but service wouldn't be a problem anyway; they're already local heroes.

"We went around London for two years," Kelly continues, "just looking for people to notice us. We were playing everywhere - the Camden Falcon, Bristol, Bath, everywhere, and telling people about these gigs, every other day. And then we played one gig in Aberdare, and fucking John seen us in Aberdare."

The gig was at the Aberdare Coliseum, and the man who saw them was John Brand, now the Stereophonics' manager.

"He was doing a music seminar in Aberdare, and we did this gig the same night, he seen us, he thought we were the best band he'd seen for ages, and took us on. It was just a right time, right place kind of thing.

"We did the demos, John took the demos around, and within two weeks - John was just taking them around for opinions, because he knew the people - he used to work with bands like Aztec Camera and everybody knew him, so he just went round to get opinions on this tape, and everybody he took it to wanted to sign the band. That was in July, and we were signed in August."

"We had this big fucking A&R scrum kind of thing," drummer Stuart Cable interjects, "because all these labels wanted to sign us, and they were really desperate to get us - actually Sony were really big time into us, and the night that we signed the record deal with V2 was the night that Kula Shaker played in London. Sony had it all worked out, they were going to sign us and then take us to the Kula Shaker gig. We went to the Kula Shaker gig anyway, and we went to the aftershow party at this club afterwards.

"And then these top nobs from Sony realised that we were the Stereophonics, and they politely came up to our manager and asked us to leave, just because we didn't sign to their record label. Just sour grapes. Everybody wanted to sign us, and then once we made our decision it wasn't like 'Best of luck, good decision' or whatever, it was like 'I fucking hate you, you should have signed to us.' It's so heavy."

"The same people that were approaching us, it was like a complete turnaround to when we were doing all the chasing," Kelly resumes. "It's exactly the same songs that we sent off to all the record companies and got letters back saying it's not really what we're looking for, and then two months later they all want to sign you. It was just one extreme to another. Every company wanted to sign us, so we just went through all the contracts to see which was the best one. We were offered more money by Sony and Warners, but V2 was just a better contract, regional setup, that kind of thing. We were given really good priority, and the people working there seemed like good people."

Kelly, Stuart and bass player Richard Jones (no relation to Kelly) all grew up on the same street in Cwmaman. "It's got a mountain here, mountain there, mountain there," says Kelly, designating a three-sided rectangle of sorts with his hands. "It's got one road in, one road out, and a street full of houses, a school, a couple of pubs, and everybody knows everyone else's business. Everybody works from Monday to Friday and maybe Saturday morning in a factory or a building site, and they work 50 weeks a year just to earn enough money to go on holidays for two weeks abroad. And they're happy doing that, as long as they get enough money to go out at the weekend and get pissed and enough money to go on holidays once a year. Shit happens and they just take the shit, shrug it off. They always know the weekend is coming."

When Kelly was 10 years old he was given a guitar for Christmas. Stuart, a few years older, already had a drum kit; the two started practising together with a couple of other lads and did their first gig in the local Workman's Club when Kelly was all of 12 - by which time he'd already written his first song.

Richard joined five years ago, and the lineup has remained solid ever since, although they've only been called the Stereophonics since that fateful gig in Aberdare in March '96. There is a bit of nervous laughter and shuffling of feet when I ask what the band used to be called, but eventually they own up that they were formerly known as the Tragic Love Company, in homage to the Tragically Hip, Mother Love Bone and Bad Company.

At first, the band tried to write songs from a political/social commentary angle ("We thought we were the Welsh U2" as Stuart puts it). "We reckoned we knew what was going on in the world," says Kelly, "and we didn't. We didn't know what the fuck we were talking about. And then I realised that I could write better things about people, and people's situations, rather than writing about politics. I just started writing about what I knew. I used to observe people and make up stories around those people - probably seriously from about 17, 18. I did a scriptwriting course in college, and the scripts and the songs were kind of bouncing off each other."

'Local Boy In The Photograph', available in Ireland since 7th July, is the band's first single to be released in this country; it's been out in the UK since March, when it took only a few hours to sell out every copy stocked in every Welsh record shop. The song is about a bloke who used to play football with Kelly. One day he came into Kelly's stall in Aberdare Market and asked what time the trains from Aberdare to Cardiff were running. He was on the cover of the next morning's local paper, having committed suicide by throwing himself into the path of the train as it arrived.

Included on the CD with the single are 'Buy Myself A Small Plane', a song about crashing a light aircraft into your home village, and 'Too Many Sandwiches', a jolly piece of invective depicting a grim wedding scene ("Grandpa drunk a drop or two / His head's still sunk in the portaloo / What a man . . . The bride and groom they dance their dance / The singer mimes there's still a chance / The bar maid smiles . . . ").

"I've always hated wedding parties and engagement parties," Kelly explains. "I reckon 80 percent of people get married just to please the family. The party's for the family, the wedding ceremony's for the party, and it's bullshit, it's just an excuse to get pissed. You always see the groom end up necking with one of the bridesmaids or chatting up the barmaid."

"And there's all these trays of sandwiches," Stuart chimes in, "and everybody's husband takes them to work the next day! They do! And fucking sausage rolls!"

The band have maintained a high degree of visibility since their signing to V2. They've played support to the likes of 3 Colours Red, Manic Street Preachers, Ocean Colour Scene - even The Who at Earl's Court, leading to a brief meeting with Roger Daltry ("Be lucky, that's all he said to us, be lucky," Stuart says reverentially). They performed at Anfield for the Hillsborough Benefit Concert to an audience of 40,000 and are currently doing a circuit of the UK festival scene that started with Glastonbury, where they played to an enthusiastic audience at 20 past 11 on a Sunday morning as Kelly struggled with effects pedals glued to his feet by the thick layer of mud on his boots.

All three members of the band still live in their home village, with no plans to leave.

"I never want to live in London," says Stuart. "It's just too vast for me, it's too big. I'm used to a small village. And as long as we're living here, people will pull us back down straightaway, put our feet back on the ground. You could walk in there, you could be as big-headed as you like, and somebody could just go 'Shut up, I remember you when you were blah blah blah'. It would be nice to have a holiday home in the South of France or something like that. But the thought of living in London just doesn't entertain me at all."

"I'd rather get pestered by people who've known me all my life than total strangers," says Kelly. "I like where I'm living. The record company have never said to us 'You should move to London', because they know that everything we do is created from where we're from."