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SONGS MEANINGS
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'A Thousand Trees'
This is about a football coach who taught Kelly, his older brother and his parents generation.

Kelly: "He's about 70 years old, this well respected guy, and they builtthese gates up for him in the ground and put his picture in the club." An acusation of abuse from two local girls 'split the town in two'.

Kelly: "It went to court and he was convicted. But he'd built all this up, and then this incident just burned him down..."

Kelly saw the title on a matchbox year ago, however many people think the song is about "Greenpeace or rainforests. It's sarcasm, that's the way we speak where we come from, but a lot of people don't get it." - Kelly

The story can be summerised by the saying "it takes years to built trust and only suspicion, not proof, to destroy it."

'Looks Like Chaplin'
When Kelly was 12 his street was flooded. Kelly: "The cars were underwater, with boats going above them. I remember having a piss in our hallway, just because I could!"

‘More Life in a Tramps Vest’
Kelly: I worked in the market for six years. I was in college and worked there at the same time just to get some money. You could be sitting there til five o'clock and you could guarantee you'd be dead for the two hours before that but as soon as you just about to close up twenty people would walk in and that would really wind me up and I'd want to kill them and that's where I got the idea from cos that's when the last minute shoppers come in. It was going to be 'Last Minute Shoppers' and then it was the phrase 'More Life In A Tramp's Vest' came from when the markets went really quiet when big stores came into town and pedestrianised streets and the trade just went away when it used to be a major trading point. It comes from there.”

'Local Boy in The Photograph'
Kelly: "I used to play football with this kid when I was 14. One day he came into the shop where I worked and asked about train times. The next day his photo was in the front of the local paper. He'd jumped under a train. That's not something you forget.

'CHECK MY EYELIDS FOR HOLES'
Kelly: "The blow job part is about whether you should get back together with someone and whether her giving you a blow job changes anything."

'THE LAST OF THE BIG TIME DRINKERS'
Kelly: "It's about people working in a factory and just saving enough money to get pissed at the weekend and to have a holiday once a year. They've got no more ambitions - that's just how they live. It's a fact of life. But people in record companies so exactly the same things"

'TOO MANY SANDWHICHES'
Kelly: "This is about the shit engagements you go to."

'BILLY DAVEYS DAUGHTER'
Kelly: "The story could be the opposite to what happened. By the time the story got to us, we heard that she'd jumped off the bridge. And some people say she was pushed. I've always found it sacinating how the story changes by the time it gets to you. It become a better story or a worse one. People exagerate and add things."

'LYING IN THE SUN'
Kelly: "We were doing a festival gig in Portugal last year, and as I was walking down the street I saw this man who had the most hideously deformed face - he looked like the Elephant Man. it was the most horrific thing I'd ever seen and it stayed with me for ages. And then a couple days later we were in Spain, just sitting by this pool for a week. But I started getting this rash on my neck from the sun so I had to stay in my room. I just started thinking about that bloke and that here was me complaining about a small rash. That kind of thing really puts things in perspective."

'Roll Up and Shine'
Kelly: "This is based on a night in a New York club called Shine where we played. The manager gave us a booth. Then this guy called Dominique came on stage talking about people's fears, the openness of sex and religion, and the final act was meant to be a woman who comes on with a pig's head and pisses all over herself, but it was cancelled. We were all going, 'What the fucking hell is going on!' At the end of the night, this guy gave us his business card and it said 'Shine - Performance and Cocktails'. People might take the song literally - us on the road drinking - but there's more to it than that."



'The Bartender and the Theif'
Kelly: "We were waiting for a plane in New Zealand and all these sailors were walking in and out of the bar. Everyone was acting really weird and there were lesbians at the bar. I thought the bartender must see so many different things as people change character, from Jekyll to Hyde, sober to drunk. So I wrote this completely tongue-in-cheek story about the bartender and the thief who is robbing everybody. I found the melody for the chorus on a dictaphone tape. I'd been putting ideas on tape for two years and had never played them back before, until then!"
Kelly: "The song came from an idea we had in this weird bar in New Zealand. It was this really strange place where these mad sailors wandered in and out all night."

'Hurry Up and Wait'
Kelly: "This is a train-of-thought song. It's based on all sorts of things: waiting for a traffic light to turn green, a kettle to boil, losing your virginity, getting married, having children. Everybody has an expectation about what the perfect life is: the big house, winning the lottery. You always wait for something better to come along because you're never satisfied with what you've got. Sometimes you wonder whether this is all it's going to be. The title comes from a phrase my brother used to say on the tour bus."

'Pick a Part That's New'
Kelly: "This came from a trip to America with Richard, when Stuart had glandular fever. It's about going to America for the first time and not being remotely shocked. I thought I was going to be really impressed, but I'd already seen it all on television. Even the Empire State Building didn't feel that big. I had to find some parts I hadn't seen before when all I saw were rows and rows of people drinking alone."

'Just Looking'
Kelly: "It's about different expectations between men and women. I always wonder what people perceive as being the perfect woman: is it a supermodel, somebody with a sense of humour, or both? I think men are more pathetic. Women grow up a lot quicker because men always wait for something better to come along. It's the most personal thing I've written. Again, it was written on the road, in a hotel room in Amsterdam. If you're not drinking, there's nothing else to do but think. It's good sometimes, but other times it drives you fucking nuts."

'Half the Lies You Tell Ain't True'
Kelly: "It's based on the media trying to find something that's not there. It was inspired by the treatment of Michael Hutchence, Princess Di and Ron Davies. George Michael is another example - how can you follow someone around just because they had a wank in a toilet? Also, when we went through Hollywood, people would point out things, like 'Oh, that's where Hugh Grant got caught with a prostitute.' You think, 'Fucking hell, this is all a movie set.' The title is another one from my brother."

'I Wouldn't Believe Your Radio'
Kelly: "I dreamt this song. That's never happened before! I bought this old Gibson 1968 SG in Cardiff and went to bed, having just watched the 'I Am The Walrus' video and there's a guitar like mine in it. I was in bed at my parents' house before I moved out with my missus and the song was going around my head at 4 am. Normally, I wake up and think, 'Ah, it's just a pile of shit', but I'd recorded this one just in case. I even wrote in my notebook: 'B-side, big brass section, jokey, take-the-piss cabaret song'. I wanted Stuart to sing it, but it ended up a bit high, so he couldn't."

'T-Shirt Suntan'
Kelly: "We played this at Earl's Court with The Who( in 1996). It was originally called 'The Pool'. I based it on a story I heard about a man who is obsessed with this singer. He goes into the record company demanding to see her and, because they won't let him in, he ends up shooting the receptionist. I tried to make him really child-like, he just wants to show off his T-shirt suntan. It took me back to when I was a kid playing at the pool opposite my house. All the kids liked to show off their little white bodies with the brown arms. It's a good image."

'Is Yesterday Tomorrow Today?'
Kelly: "When we went to Hamburg we saw all these prostitutes in the windows. The easy way looking at it was five boys walking down the street, getting drunk and having a laugh. But I decided to turn it around and write what she was thinking: what does she dream for? I was down the club in Cwmaman and this little kid came up to the guy I was talking to and said, 'Is yesterday tomorrow today?' It means that every day is the same, even in all these different places."

'A Minute Longer'
Kelly: "This was the first one I wrote in my new house, before we went on tour last January. It's about if there's a shit time happening, you stay with your memories a bit longer, rather than coming back to reality. If something is a pain in the arse, you think back to something better."

'She Takes Her Clothes Off'
Kelly: "This used to be a nasty punk song! I sounded like a chipmunk because it was in a really high key, so we decided on an acoustic version instead, it's quite mellow and melancholy. The character is a woman who was once really good-looking and the men used to give her all the attention. Then, when she gets older, she puts on weight, so the only way she can get attention is by stripping off in a bar and acting the goat. It's based on someone who I knew in Cwmaman, who was always rumoured to be a prostitute."

Kelly: "It's just about people who were once really good-looking and everything they ever lived for was the way they looked and then they get old and can never accept that; and they just get drunk and they still stand on pool tables and strip off. It goes into much more detail but I don't think I can really go into the details of the story...
she used to lie on a pool table and people used to flick peanuts at certain areas of her body and win money."

'Plastic California'
Kelly: "In LA, I soon realised that no one is a waitress - they're all actors and actresses. We went on a graveyard tour where a hearse takes you to all these dead film stars' houses. We just thought, 'What a fucked-up town!' Then again, we must be pretty fucked-up to get in the back of a hearse with this guy burning joss-sticks in the front! The lyrical voice can't make up his mind whether he likes this place or not, so in the end he just says, 'Well, pleased to meet you anyway...'"

'I Stopped to Fill My Car Up'
Kelly: "My girlfriend works in a hairdresser's and this woman wanted to give us a piano, so we swapped it for a Stereophonics T-shirt. The only song I could play was 'Imagine', but I had these chords, so one night I came in from the pictures and wrote this song really quickly. It's about leading the listener on and it comes from a story that a bloke told me. He said that one night he stopped to get some petrol and someone climbed in the back of his car. We didn't want any guitars on it. It's the perfect song to finish the album with."


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