Public Service Broadcasting have gone from one extreme to the other.

The world’s most unlikely pop stars previously released an album centred around the space race, but their latest effort, Every Valley, looks at the mining industry in Wales.

“I wanted to move away from ever-more-epic subject matter and there's nowhere bigger than space, anyway,” explains the instrumental group’s guitarist, J Willgoose, Esq.

“Moving to something with more of an obviously everyday human angle made sense. The BFI had a lot of mining films in their archive, and once I started doing more research I started to think we might get more out of it if we focused the album more tightly on one particular region.”

The album continues the Public Service Broadcasting tradition though, mixing together samples, old film footage and other archive material, then blending it together with instrumental rock. It is a formula that over three albums has led PSB to both critical acclaim and unlikely chart success, with Every Valley cracking the Top 5 in the album charts and earning them a date at the Barrowland tomorrow night.

For Every Valley the trio settled down into a community building in Ebbw Vale in Wales, a mining heartland. Their songs examine all aspects of the rise and decline of the industry, aided by a few guests.

Manic Street Preachers frontman James Dean Bradfield appears on the song Turn No More, while Glasgow’s own Tracyanne Campbell, formerly of Camera Obscura, contributes to lead single Progress.

“I knew James a bit from our time supporting the Manics on their UK & European dates,” adds J (and no, that’s not his real name).

“He said yes to the idea straight away, but I still thought it'd be hard to get him onboard as he might just be being polite. He's a very genuine and generous person though so I shouldn't have had any doubts.

“I didn't know Tracyanne prior to contacting her. I have a friend who knows Camera Obscura though and she put me in touch, and I flew up to Glasgow to speak to her and try to persuade her that this record was worth being a part of.”

Every Valley is an album that reflects on the past, but is very much of the present. Ebbw Vale voted in favour of Brexit, and the whole record was written with the EU referendum as a backdrop, fuelling J’s writing.

“I remember writing Go To The Road the day after the referendum vote and remembering the cathartic power of music, just the release of tension and angst and anxiety,” he says.

“It seemed a pertinent kind of anxiety too because it feels in many ways as if Brexit is a reflection of what happened in the 80s, and the disenfranchisement and neglect of these communities.”

The band are now ready to bring those songs out onto the road. They are also hoping to deal a blow to any ticket touts too, using their website for ticket sales and trying to cut out the dealers who cash in on popular shows.

J points the finger at big companies not doing enough.

“The main responsibility has to lie with big ticketing agencies and especially those who own secondary ticketing sites,” he says.

“They cannot claim to be concerned about stopping secondary ticketing while, at the same time, owning sites like GetMeIn or StubHub. It's an example of the worst side of capitalism. The change we need is so big that it can only come from government, but we know what the Tories think about regulation – they are in the process of destroying our economy purely so that we can enjoy unregulated markets and the joys of chlorinated chicken and so on.”

Tomorrow the band will return to Glasgow. Their last gig here, at the O2 ABC, even included a pre show video asking fans to not record the gig on their phones, because it would distract others in the crowd.

“It doesn't bother me as a performer at all because I don't have to look at the crowd through someone's four inch screen for the whole show,” explains J.

“It bothers me as a gig-goer immensely though, and we always try to think of things from our fans' point of view. One person holding up a phone to take a terrible video they'll probably never even watch in full can ruin the enjoyment of a song for about ten people behind them. It's just common courtesy.”

Public Service Broadcasting, Barrowland, tomorrow, £24, 7pm

JONATHAN GEDDES