You sing it, we’ll have it, Kelly

Stereophonics Oochya!

Chas ’n’ Dave’s Gertcha meant ‘sling your hook’. ‘Ooycha!’ is friendlier.

It’s a word Kelly Jones made up to mean “Let’s have it”.

Once you call your record Oochya!, the Welsh wonder explains, navel gazing goes straight out the window.

Proving the point, the album kicks off with Hanging On Your Hinges, a proper old-school rocker propelled by a dirty, hardhitting blues riff. It’s big, brash and irresistible, with Jones roaring, ‘You’ve got me hanging on your hinges, slamming doors right in your face’.

The gentler second track, Forever, sounds familiar because it is. It was the B-side to 2008’s

You’re My Star, now promoted to a single in its own right. ‘I wish I could take your pain for you and release you,’ Kelly sings soulfully on the dreamily uplifting chorus.

His sandpaper voice has lost none of its raspy charm.

The south Wales band’s 12th studio album is hugely confident and packs in several nods to Kelly’s heroes. Don’t Know What Ya Got could almost be a lost track from Rolling Stones album Exile On Main Street.

Running Around My Brain is another upbeat cracker with guitar licks that recall the great Billy Gibbons, and you could imagine Steven Tyler adding sleazy vocals to the slow swagger of Do Ya Feel My Love?

Every Dog Has Its Day even tips its wig to Elton John.

Being working class with a love of classic rock hasn’t endeared the Stereos to trendy critics. But their track record of platinum-selling albums shows the market for unpretentious raunch remains undented.

They serve it well with heartfelt anthems (Leave The Light On) and soulful rockers (Made A Mess Of Me). Their feet might be in the past but their hearts are firmly in the right place.