Album review: Kids In Glass Houses – Pink Flamingo

Re-embracing the past led Kids In Glass Houses to this slick new chapter. Having split in 2014, the Cardiff-based heroes reunited last year to celebrate the 15th anniversary of their debut album, Smart Casual, at Slam Dunk Festival. The experience evidently made the five-piece wonder what sort of new music they’d make wearing older men’s clothes. The resulting record, Pink Flamingo, suggests they’ve donned Hawaiian shirts and loafers, not blazers and Hush Puppies.

And while it’s not the kind of effort you’d expect from a band named after a Glassjaw song – more in keeping, in fact, with Daryl Palumbo’s other band, Head Automatica – it’s a deft tinkering with what was already there, pushing the ’80s influences that characterised their earlier releases closer to the fore. In doing so they’ve made a seamless sonic switch, producing 11 tracks that could easily slot into their setlist without fear of inconsistency, while courting the zeitgeist in the age of fellow nostalgia mavens like The 1975 (listen to Have A Good Time for proof).

It’s impossible to listen to Strawberry Sky, for instance, without envisioning the bleeding glow of a tropical sunset, the red tinge shimmering upon the water; or the sudden desire for a drink adorned with a piece of fruit and with a tiny umbrella in it, mixed by Tom Cruise – the 62-year-old version, though, not the one from 1988’s Cocktail. Meanwhile, A Ghost To Live With, with its plucked acoustic and earnest croon, recalls John Mayer, with Aled Phillips’ lyrics showing that the passing of time has brought him more to say – not all of it positive – and an increased openness to say it (‘We’re picking up the pieces / The black box still remains’.)

To paraphrase the title of one of its best tracks, Pink Flamingo feels like déjà vu. Of both what made Kids In Glass Houses special in the first place and the decade when pop rocked – albeit shot through with the passion and perspective of a band who are happy to be back – and sounding even more glad to be alive. Get tickled pink.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: You Me At Six, Twin Atlantic, Don Broco

Pink Flamingo is released on October 25 via Family Recipe