While Welsh boys Kids In Glass Houses may be named after a Glassjaw lyric and share a record label with bands like Slipknot, they’ve always been as much a pop as a hardcore band. Their debut, Smart Casual, consisted entirely of slick, crafted slabs of pop punk goodness as much influenced by Michael Jackson and Prince as by Refused and Black Flag. Lyrically it was girls, parties, aren’t small towns a bit crap, I love my friends; run of the mill growing up stuff. There was the odd biting couplet, but for the most part, the band was unashamedly after the big time and weren’t afraid to take those who buy two or three albums a year and would die before entering a mosh pit with them.

Interestingly, though, it seems from the songs that they air from follow-up album Dirt that they’ve taken a diversion from the road to the arenas. True, the woahs and oohs that featured in their debut’s choruses aren’t completely gone, but the newer material certainly feels different, harder edged in places and sombre in others.

New single Matters At All has a nagging guitar riff that gives the track a regretful tinge, with a melody that washes over you, rather than demands your attention, while Young Blood is a balls out punk song. The new stuff fits well with their debut’s songs, though, so the poppy refrains of Dance All Night, Give Me What I Want and Lovely Bones still get the chance to be eaten up by the O2’s rabid crowd. For a band that seemed so single-minded about becoming a fixture in the UK’s mainstream, it’s nice to see that Kids In Glass Houses have not gone straight for the jugular, but have made a new album that’s genuinely interesting. It’ll do them no harm in the long run.