Oochya!
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STEREOPHONICS – OOCHYA! – ALBUM REVIEW
Longevity and relevancy in the music industry don’t always go hand in hand. There aren’t many acts that can realistically claim the relevancy of Stereophonics who are now in their 30th year as a band!
While many contemporaries have either split up or faded into the nostalgia scene, Stereophonics are still going strong, still putting out hit albums, still selling out arenas and still headlining major festivals. The staying power of a band written off many times over the years is indeed incredibly impressive.
Their creative output is equally as impressive, both in terms of quality and quantity. New album ‘Oochya!’ is their 12th album and continues their streak of realising an album roughly every two years since their 1997 debut.
So, we’ve established that nobody can really argue their work ethic, but let’s look at that quality point now as we hit play on ‘Oochya!’.
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Kicking off with lead single, ‘Hanging on Your Hinges’, and latest single, ‘Forever’, there is a familiar start to the album, with another single, ‘Do Ya Feel My Love?’, sitting at track 4. This is obviously a very good start but the album clocks in at over an hour long, so can the rest keep up the pace?
I do find these days that bands with good levels of longevity and relevancy sometimes become over reliant on a couple of good singles to sell albums which in reality lack any real substance. With their release schedule, I’m always half expecting Stereophonics to fall into this category, and in all honesty you’d argue they’ve earned that right.
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They never have appeared to be willing to settle on their laurels however, and once again as ‘Oochya’ progresses there is plenty to enjoy. Be it rockier numbers like ‘Running Round My Brain’ and ‘Don’t Know What Ya Got’ or slower tracks such as ‘You’re My Soul’ and ‘All I Have Is You’, that proven Stereophonics quality is here in spades.
You’re never going to get much in the way of experimentation, this is Stereophonics doing what Stereophonics do, but it sounds modern enough to maintain that aspect of relevancy.
To answer the overriding question here, ‘Oochya’ is good, it does exactly what it needs to do for the band and will continue their place in the musical eco-system.
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