STEREOPHONICS
Oochya! (Ignition)
While looking through his hard drive of unreleased offcuts for a 25-year celebration release, frontman Kelly Jones came across a bunch of songs he deemed album-worthy. So instead of a nostalgic compilation from Stereophonics, we get Oochya! – an album title as punchy as its opening track, Hanging On Your Hinges. Still, if you subsequently expect Stereophonics’ 12th studio album to be in-your-face and brazen, the overall feel is definitely mid-tempo, safe and sure.
It’s a formula that has worked for a band who have had more number one albums than not and continues to fill arenas (and, in Cardiff at least, the Principality Stadium), and with a voice full of natural style and as rich as Jones’, it’s no surprise. Oochya! is another album that Stereophonics fans will love and critics will find little to like – but after a quarter of a century in the sun, that’s nothing new for the ‘Phonics.
words JOHN-PAUL DAVIES
