Chutzpah – noun Slang.
1. unmitigated effrontery or impudence; gall.
2. audacity; nerve.

It’s been a long old ride for Ginger and the boys from The Wildhearts, indeed as the band approaches its 20th birthday it is something of a stretch to call them boys still. Through eight studio albums and many incarnations the band have produced some of British rocks best and most underrated music and now they’re back and with a title like Chutzpah! They’ve got a lot to live up to.

Chutzpah! is undoubtedly a highly polished album; musically tight, vocally smooth, but in the removal of all the jagged edges they’ve somehow stripped away the shine. Gone are the rough and ready riffs, the occasionally painfully truthful lyrics and the wayward vocals and instead we have an album that any all-American-punk-rock-Greenday-wannabes would be thrilled to put their name to.

What differentiates Chutzpah!’s tracks from The Wildhearts album fodder of past days is that Ginger has thrown open the doors of penmanship to the other band members rather than holding the quill tightly in his own hands, resulting in a slightly unwieldy mixture of styles. This variety of tracks serve as both a departure and a return for the band; we have the traditional passionate angry shouts of Tim Smith and Mazel Tov Cocktail sitting awkwardly beside the processed cheese of The Only One and You Are The Proof That Not All Women Are Insane.

Plastic Jebus and Jackson Whites offer a goodly serving of Ginger’s usual acerbic lyricism and observation, but sadly that’s where his customarily witty and often vitriolic lyrics end and in their place are the far more air-wave-friendly “woah-woah-whoa’s”. Perhaps it’s the familiarity that makes the Ginger-led tracks the most comfortable listening, or perhaps it’s the depth of the lyrics, but either way they leave the others feeling like not-unpleasant easy-listening soft-rock. On the whole, it’s a good thirty-six minutes of enjoyable music; good, but not great.

Chutzpah! may well give Ginger and co., the commercial success that they’ve long been seeking, but whether it goes down quite so well with their die-hard fans remains to be seen. Let’s just hope that this is the last time that The Wildhearts dip their toes into the waters of the mainstream and the next album sees a return to the exciting white water rapid ride we’ve all come to expect.

Chutzpah! by The Wildhearts is released on August 31st through Backstage Alliance.

The Wildhearts begin their UK tour in September.