Its time for Songs for The Easily Pleased as Portsmouth's The Glorias come to The Wedgewood Rooms

The Portsmouth band’s garage-rock and punk-rock spleen-venting has seen them win a devoted following.

And they’re squeezing in one last show of the year at Southsea’s Edge of The Wedge on Friday, December 30 before knuckling down to finish album three in the new year.

It will also be the band’s first album since their former drummer Den Barry took over frontman duties.

Original singer Gez Driffield lives over on the Isle of Wight but work commitments were making it increasingly difficult for him to come over for rehearsals and gigs.

When the band had three gigs lined up in quick succession for summer 2021, Den put himself forward as a temporary solution.

‘I've always sung backing vocals, and I did the lyric sheets for the albums, so I had access to all that. We didn't want to knock those three gigs back, so I said: “What about if we get Steve Kirk to dep for me on drums?” He deputised for me a couple of times a few years back when I wasn't very well. He's a great bloke who we've all known for years – and importantly he's a really good drummer! “Then I'll learn the lyrics for a set and see how it goes...” I did those gigs and had a whale of a time.’

With Gez sadly unable to commit to dates, Den says: ‘It just kind of made sense to carry on as we were. Steve had come out of semi-retirement to play drums, and he was happy to carry on.

Here we are a year-and-a-half later and we're having a ball and we're recording the third album, and it's all as business as usual as it ever gets for a bunch of middle-aged men playing in a punk, rock'n'roll band. It was meant to be a stopgap and it's evolved into something more.’

However, Den admits that while he could happily sing the old songs, he was worried when it came to writing new material.

‘Gez had a real strong ability to write fantastic lyrics – I was always in awe of his words. I quite liked the getting up and pretending to be a frontman, but when it comes to writing new stuff, this is potentially going to be a problem,’ he laughs, ‘but I've taken to it and I'm really enjoying it and people seem to like it. People are being very kind to me!

They’ve been recording the new album with producer Steve 'Smiley' Barnard at his studio in Fleet. Smiley is also drummer for veteran rockers The Alarm, so recording has been put on hold while Smiley fulfills his Alarm duties, but as Den says: ‘We've done a few days already and we've got seven songs down. We've got the last three ready to go, so then we'll have 10 songs for the new album which is going to be called Songs For The Easily Pleased. It sums us up really...

‘It's not a massive departure from normal Glorias fare, lots of ranting in the old English tradition of standing up and waving our metaphorical fist at the elites, the public school-educated, the Tory party, royalty, Brexit voters. We've got a bitter-sweet love song in there, and we've got a sentimental rock'n'roller about my younger brother who we lost a couple of years ago.

‘At our age - five men in our mid-to-late 50s, it's always been about grumpiness and dissent. There's a few twists and turns from where we were, but it's similar fare to usual. We've been playing two or three for the last few months - it's nice to record something you've already been able to play out live, so you can tweak them.

‘We might play four or five new ones at The Edge – hopefully they'll fit seamlessly in with what we already do!’

They are supported by The Milton Underground Resistance and Electric Lemonade. Go to wedgewood-rooms.co.uk.