Back in 2010 it looked like Manchester’s I Am Kloot had finally received some long overdue recognition when their fifth album Sky At Night was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize.

Now, with the critically acclaimed follow-up Let It All In breaking the UK top ten, the trio look set to follow in the footsteps of their producers – Guy Garvey and Craig Potter of Elbow – albeit on their own terms.

“We are very different bands, playing very different kinds of music,” says bassist Peter Jobson, who started I Am Kloot with songwriter and frontman John Bramwell and drummer Andy Hargreaves in 1999 from the ashes of their previous band The Mouth.

“When you play and record music you want as many people as possible to hear it – but you can only do what you do and see what happens.

“Sky At Night clicked into a whole new world, we got favourable reviews and for the first time we got played on the radio.

“I don’t know if the big arenas would suit Kloot – something would be lost playing in a big space. We would rather play a few nights in a smaller venue.

“My favourite gigs as a musician are the ones that are 1,000 to 1,500 capacity.”

When it came to starting work on Let It All In, the plan was to strip everything back after the orchestration of Sky At Night.

“We didn’t want to make Sky At Night again,” he says.

“Sky At Night was the first LP where we had a title before we started writing songs. It was all about the stars, sky and moon – it took on this different persona of a late night jazzy affair.

“This is a bit lighter, pared back to the three-piece band. It was back to how we were when we started.”

He admits Sky At Night still had a big influence on how they made the record, not least with the return of the same producers.

“Guy recorded our first LP [Natural History, released in 2001],” says Jobson. “Over the course of being in Manchester we have been friends, done gigs and drunk beers together.

“To be honest we would have done every LP with Guy and Craig if they hadn’t been busy doing their own thing. Because we are such close friends and know each other’s music so well it makes the decision-making quick. They have been to so many of our gigs nobody else knows our music as well.”

Bramwell couldn’t even hide a holiday accident from his producer, when, in Jobson’s words, he got “a speedboat in the teeth”.

The band initially didn’t let onto their producers that there might be a problem when it came to recording vocals.

“Guy and Craig were listening to what we had done, and could hear there was something going on,” says Jobson.

“Guy told him: ‘You need to get your teeth sorted out’. A few trips to the dentist and he was fine, he got the shine back!”

This album has seen the band dip into their back catalogue and dust off a few orphans from previous recording sessions, as well as penning new material.

“We’ve always thought you should try to make every song as strong as each other,” says Jobson. “If you’ve got ten songs they should all be of a certain standard, with no fillers.

“There are a few old songs there – John has had Some Better Day since he was a teenager. Masquerade’s an old one too, and Let Them All In was something we played with The Mouth, but it has been reworked.

“Even The Stars has changed quite dramatically to fit in with the LP. We did it live once in Holland in 2005 on a television show and it was rocking, pure hammering. We tried it like that many times, but it never seemed to work.

“When we got the character for what this LP was going to be we tried out some songs that had been about for a while.

“John is a prolific songwriter – he has a lot of stuff knocking around, some work and some don’t. He has always been a great lyricist, but sometimes musically they don’t fit.”

Jobson admits the lyricist behind the visceral line “there’s blood on your legs, I love you” in early I Am Kloot classic Twist has matured and lost some of his early angst and anger.

“Both John and Andy have daughters now,” he says. “Shoeless is about John’s daughter – it’s beautiful and positive.

“He’s writing about what’s in front of him. These songs are about his life and are more confessional.

“He’s more open to the imaginative, reflective and upbeat kind of songs – although there’s still a bit of schadenfraude in there.”

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