GLASSYOUTH

GLASSYOUTH know they’re winners. It’s a proven fact: they’ve been voted, phone polled and judge-declared as such, they’ve played festivals and been awarded equipment for their triumphs. On TV and in judging cloisters GLASSYOUTH have been lauded and rewarded, right up to the point where, reaching the finals of Channel 4’s Mobile Unsigned Act contest, they realised they were no longer fit for the talent show leagues.

“We were getting through rounds and winning competitions and your ego’s getting boosted,” says drummer Oliver Yonchev, “and it was a wake-up call that we’re not competing with the smaller bands now.”

It wasn’t always thus. GLASSYOUTH, with an average of 20 years old between the five members, sprung from the barren rock wastes of Barnsley where, according to singer Sam Stevens, “There’s not a great deal to do, that’s why you go into music. It’s getting better but it’s taking its time.”

Sam – who’s half brother is Oliver, is the son of a dancer mum and a dad who works as a magician in Las Vegas - was a sport-obsessed teenage MC, appearing on several Yorkshire speed garage compilations and at Sheffield underground nights, but his heart really lay with Kings Of Leon, Bloc Party, Razorlight and Nirvana. One afternoon early in 2006 he overheard his brother’s band auditioning a female singer in a bedroom: “I was like ‘ I can do better than her’ and they went ‘come on then, have a go!’ and that were it.”

After eighteen years of fighting the performer spirit in his blood, Sam joined as singer with The Headliners (as they were then called), a motley bunch of music college hot-shots. Guitarist Leroy Smith was the classic rock hog, the Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones fiend whose dad played in a Motown covers band called Harlem Nights. Guitarist and song-originator Sean Parkin was the child protégé, playing guitar from the age of nine when “my dad threw me a chord book and a Thin Lizzy CD”. Bassist Patrick Olding provided the Beatles, Costello and Strokes melodic grounding, and the five of them immediately set about defying the Barnsley live circuit (essentially a run-down hole called Archers and, um, that’s it) to cut a jagged modern slash across a Yorkshire scene over-run with punk pop and Arctic Monkeys wannabes.

Oliver: “The first gig we ever did they charged us to play, £150. We hammered the local scene for six months playing half covers and half our own set.”

Their classic Maximo-meets-Maccabees strut, as evinced on their standout early tune ‘Bottle After Bottle’, soon caught ears further afield. They were hired as support band for The Pigeon Detectives, The Holloways and then The Wombats on their exhaustive breakthrough UK tour which saw them play almost every day for two months solid. “You realise how good you’ve got to be,” says Sam, “you’ve got to get better fast.”

The Headliners, however, did their ‘getting better’ in public. Entering Channel 4’s T4 On The Beach competition with ‘Bottle After Bottle’, they found themselves rushed through the heats by popular demand and featured on TV on a regular basis as eventual winners of the show, bagging the opening slot of the T4 On The Beach event. They were then invited to enter Channel 4’s Mobile Act Unsigned 2007 contest as a result, “We didn’t do much playing,” Sam says of their camera-time, “it were more about personality”. Another competition win gave them a slot at Glastonbury 2007 as part of the first BBC Introducing Stage line-up (they had to swap stage times with The Ting Tings as “they had to go off and do an interview”) plus another appearance at Glastonbury 2008 having won the AKG Unsigned Heroes competition.

Between the two Glastonburys, The Headliners found their fanbase billowing on the back of their Mobile Act coverage. In Newcastle the Tyne crowds flocked; in Birmingham they played to “millions of kids” at a Clothes Show gig at the Birmingham NEC. Word spread like wildfire, a week-long headline tour of the nation’s Academies sold out, the call for support slots came in from Mark Ronson, The Bravery, The Twang, Little Man Tate, The Hoosiers, The Subways, The Maccabees, The Ordinary Boys and Amy Macdonald. Major label scouts snuffled at their heels, trying to arrange showcases in London or Manchester to see the band. “They always wanted you to come and play in certain places,” Sam recalls, “but we didn’t have any transport so we’d go ‘no, if you want to see us you’re gonna have to come here!’”

By the time they played Glastonbury 2008 their exposure had reached fever pitch, and it was here that new independent label Global Mongrel saw them play and swiftly offered them the record deal of their dreams. “We could do whatever we wanted music wise,” says Sean, “we wanted an independent label.”

That Autumn The Headliners took five weeks off the touring circuit to prepare for the recording of their debut album ‘Never See Never Learn’ at 2 Fly Studios in Sheffield between November 2008 and January 2009. Arctic Monkeys producer Alan Smyth was at the production helm, recording the noises they were making when they least expected it and taking a slash-and-burn approach to their material.

“He shredded them,” Sam laughs. “That was a massive learning curve. We went in and half of our songs got re-arranged or bits cut out.”

“We wrote a couple of songs when we came out of the studio and there was no messing about in them,” adds Sean. “Alan did us such a favour. He taught us how to write a song, win your audience over straight away.”

Similarly, the band took the scythe to their own name. Having been copyrighted elsewhere The Headliners was out; for ten minutes they were Bamboo State, then Shapes And Daggers and finally GLASSYOUTH. And GLASSYOUTH had recorded a vital and vivacious modern guitar pop album. Melding Editors moods (see ‘Wish You Well’) with Maccabees melodicism (‘Why Don’t You’), The Kooks’ everyman twangle and Kings Of Leon’s widescreen vision (‘All I Ever Knew’) it’s poppy perfection and has “a song for everyone”. Lyrically it takes in the dangers of drinking (first single ‘Bottle After Bottle’, about an alcoholic parent’s unravelling life), the pointlessness of running from your problems (second single ‘Run’) and girl troubles (everything else).

“I don’t want to write every song about that,” says lyricist Sam, “it’d be easy for me to write every song about girls forever, it’s that easy to do. To write about something else is a lot more challenging. [With ‘Bottle After Bottle’] I wanted to write it from a different perspective. Loads of bands have written about going out and getting pissed up and having a good time, I wanted to write something from another point of view. And Jeremy Kyle, he’s an inspiration.”

Bunting out, Britain: GLASSYOUTH have arrived to claim their prize.

MARK BEAUMONT