THEY spent a few years ­working on their new album - now the ­Stereophonics can't wait to get cracking on the next one.

The Welsh rockers behind hit albums such as Word Gets Around are set for two nights at the SSE Hydro this week. They are promoting this year's Graffiti On The Train record, in which the band sound at their best for years.

Now bassist Richard Jones is hopeful they'll be recording the follow-up as soon as possible.

"We had a lot of ideas left over from this album, so we'll probably go back in early next year and start looking at them," he says.

"We'll be piloting ideas for a release late next year or maybe early 2015. Making music is all that this band is about. We're either gigging or in the studio but not the types to say 'let's take two years off'. Even when we were away recently we were always writing and recording."

They'll be hoping to replicate the success of Graffiti, an album which saw the band try to produce a more cinematic sound.

To achieve that they called on film composer David Arnold, who worked on several James Bond films, as well as producing albums by the likes of Bjork.

"He listened to a few tracks we'd been working on and totally got onboard because he knew what we were trying to do.

"It was fabulous, it was the biggest orchestra we've ever worked with and they'd worked on some of the Bond themes."

For all the Stereophonics can be stereotyped as a solid meat and potatoes style rock band, there's always been a cinematic streak to them, with singer Kelly Jones having spoken about his interest in scriptwriting on many occasions. His songs often possess a storytelling quality.

On Graffiti the group felt they let themselves follow that instinct fully, rather than worrying about trying to write songs for radio airplay.

"That cinematic aspect has always been there with the band before but we didn't want to be tied with it then," says Richard.

"This time we weren't focused on radio friendly songs or worrying about how long they'd been, or how many verses each had, we were letting the songs dictate what they needed to be."

That's not to say the band are mellowing out. New tracks like Indian Summer will be backed up by the group's hefty back catalogue at the Hydro shows, with classics like Local Boy In The Photograph, Just Looking and Dakota set to figure.

Having played nearly every Glasgow venue, Richard is eager to experience the newest addition.

"When we were up [in Scotland] at the beginning of the year, the promoter showed us the plans for the Hydro and the design of it, and we thought it looked fabulous," he says.

"Coupled with the reaction of the Scottish crowd, it should be a great couple of nights.

"I've never had a bad memory of a gig in Glasgow, or Scotland as a whole, to be honest. We've had such good relationships with Scottish crowds going back to touring in 1996, and playing places like the Cathouse.

"I think we've done every venue there and always had fabulous nights out there too. If we've got a day off on the tour we'll try and have it after the Glasgow gig.

"It's like going from Wales to Scotland is the next step for us, we can just skip England and go to Scotland if we want to enjoy ourselves."

Glasgow has always supported the Stereophonics throughout their career, dating back to before debut record Word Gets Around was released in 1997.

Eight albums into their career, it's 1999's Performance and Cocktails Richard looks back on most fondly.

"A lot of the memories always go back to Performance and Cocktails for me," he says.

"The first album, all the tracks were written before we had a record deal so it was a case of going into the studio and redoing stuff, so with the second album we had to come up with the goods.

"We'd had our first major touring experience, and were doing videos, and the band was moving so quickly, so those were good memories."

Yet what's key for the bassist is that the group keep moving ahead. "You can't change the past, it's about what we can do in the future," he says.

"We've made mistakes, we've done great things and we use all those experiences to move forward as a band and do things people haven't heard."