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Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds "Chasing Yesterday"
(2015)
Riverman/In The Heat Of The Moment/The Girl With The X-Ray
Eyes/Lock All The Doors/The Dying Of The Light/The Right Stuff/While The Song
Remains The Same/The Mexican/You Know We Can't Go Back/Ballad Of The Mighty I
"Somewhere
in the crowd she heard me jingle-jangling, like a memory that fades"
I've been wondering for the past four years now what
the second flight of the former Oasis guitarist's sequel might sound like - and
I wasn't expecting this. To recap slightly the world went 'mad fer it' (i.e the
first album) in 2011, with every superlative under the sun even though the
album was largely full of...nothing, six new songs that were easily the worst
Noel had written in his career surrounded by four truly gorgeous Oasis outtakes
that fans have long treasured on bootleg and which were either left unchanged
('Stop The Clocks') or ruined beyond repair ('Everybody Is On The Run' 'If I
Had A Gun' - OK 'Record Machine' wasn't
too bad). It's still the worst Oasis-related record in my collection (and yes I
do own 'Be Here Now'!) and yet the world seemed to love it, which only goes to
show that you can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time (insert topical
David Cameron joke here). For four years now I've been fearing that Noel - not
one to take compliments lightly - would end up stuck in the same box for the
rest of his career. Namely sounding 'stupidly modern' rather than 'modern with
a Noel Gallagher twist', for despite Noel's claims in interviews to hate modern
music with a passion even greater than mine who truly would have been able to
tell that first album apart from the likes of an Ed Sheeran or a Miley Cirus
had those vocals and guitar solos been removed, those four older Oasis outtakes
apart? With that Oasis wall of noise turned from the axe of old that used to
cut through all things bland and artificial and songwriting going from
pioneering to something tacky best described as 'safe', that record seemed a
long long way from 'Don't Believe The Truth' never mind 'Definitely Maybe'.
Thankfully second album 'Chasing Yesterday'
is...something, though I'm not honestly sure what. The record sounds at first
to be very similar to its predecessor: the same bland thud going through all
the songs, clattering drumming that's not a patch on even Tony McCaroll's from
the first Oasis line-up and that same let's-insert-a-chorus-right-here!
mentality that's been dogging Noel ever since Oasis Mark Two were born circa
the year 2000. There are again six songs that I can't stand, leaving a
similarly disappointing 40% listenable rate, but to be fair all of these half a
dozen songs at least try to do something that's a little bit different and new
and fail rather than try something totally bland and safe and fail as per last
time. This time though the other four songs really are worthy of the Noel
Gallagher name and are the first 'new' Noel songs to build up a bit of genuine
excitement for a decade now. Even the expected ho-hum 'contemporary' recording,
which is going to sound way more passé than the 1990s Oasis recordings within
about five years I reckon, can't hide the excitement that's in the room - yes
Noel still sounds entirely 'wrong' in most of these settings, but this time he
sounds as if he wants to be there, rather than jumping on the bandwagon of the
generation that's crept up behind him the past two decades.
The biggest surprise of all is that most of these
new songs aren't born from Oasis' past or present but from an entirely new and
unexpected direction: jazz! Yes, ever since the sarcastic tag added on to the
end of classy 'Whatever' B-side 'It's
Good To Be Free' ('Jazz...nice!') we've assumed that the genre was one that
Oasis would never touch. After all, in many ways it's the antithesis of the
adrenalin-fuelled aggression of their early rock sound or the pristine clarity
of their ballads, with 'Be Here Now' proving how badly things can unravel when
the band get carried away and have too much of a good thing. However that's the
only word that can describe album highlights 'Riverman' and 'The Right Stuff'
(ever so nearly the same song , but as it's a good one we'll let that pass). That
covers two highlights and the album's biggest surprises, but even the other two
new classics don't go anywhere near old territory or for that matter most new
territory: 'In The Heat Of Moment' is the closest Noel has come to writing a
Eurovision entry (like the other week's review, not meant as the insult many
readers may take it to be), insanely catchy and sung somewhere between
mischievous and parody (it's a lot better than our own woeful entry this year,
with which we deserve to come last again - unlike last year's which bucked a
declining decade trend to be almost enjoyable). And finally 'The Dying Of The
Light' does return to pastures old, but only as old as the last CD, with a
second song about the fear of death and growing old written from a much 'older'
perspective than the (still better) 'Stop The Clocks'.
All four songs would have been highlights on any of
the second half run of Oasis albums - which only pains me all the more because
we have to put up with six songs that aren't even good enough to be filler.
'The Girl With X-Ray Eyes' is a dead crib off fellow AAA band's far more
convincing rocker 'The Girl With The Hungry Eyes' from their 1979 'reboot' album
'Freedom At Point Zero' - and if it seems unlikely that Noel should have been
listening to a by-then washed up prog rock outfit five years past their best
trying to become punk rockers then remember that Noel got his band name from a
recording by their first incarnation Jefferson Airplane. 'Lock All The Doors'
is a middle-aged man's memory of what it used to be to rock, played by a
woefully unconvincing band (just compare this back to back with Oasis B-side
'Headshrinker' or for more casual fans classic 'Rock and Roll Star' - this
energy is false and repetitive and even Noel's stronger-than-average vocal
can't save it). 'While The Song Remains The Same' is a third jazz song that's
simply one too many, with the least memorable melody of the trio and very overwritten
lyrics. 'The Mexican' is a so-called comedy song about 'taking crack' and
smuggling drugs with a ploddy riff and a weird 'woah woah woah' chorus that sounds
like the Paul McCartney Frog Song Chorus smoking illegal substances. Noel
admitted was a last-minute addition to the album to 'lighten' the mood -
despite the four excellent songs this is a record that painfully needs to be
deeper, not lighter. 'You Know We Can't Go Back' is the kind of noisy thrash
pop song that tends to be Noel's 'default' setting whenever he needs a song in
a hurry, but this one isn't even up to 'Mucky Fingers' or 'Turn Up The Sun'
(though it is, mercifully, an improvement on 'Get Off Your High Horse Baby').
Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the album closer 'The Ballad Of The
Mighty I', which starts off as the sort of thing Abba would do in the modern
world with all the modern trickery, an instant classic pop melody with a
terrific and typical Noel Gallagher build - but then it stops, goes backwards
to where it began and then limps its way into one of the most unmemorable Noel
Gallagher choruses ever (I'll find you, yes I'll find you, If I gotta be the
man who walks...I'll find you, yes I'll find you, if I gotta be the man who
walks the Earth alone!') As Noel's expletive-filled DVD Commentary self would
put it, 'absolute nonsense!' Sadly a dull sounding record, which sounds as if
it's been polished with Mr Sheen for a good year, with a band who never quite
get it together (the keyboards aren't bad to be fair, adding a mystical twinkly
affair throughout, but the rhythm section is hopeless) can't even make the most
of the worst tracks - or make the really good ones sound as perfect as they
deserve to be.
So what do you make of an album that somehow
simultaneously avoids most of the taps you had been dreading it would fall into
- and yet still gets so many of the songwriting basics wrong? I mean just take
the name 'Chasing Yesterday' (a title Noel came up with in a hurry and has
since said he 'detests' - it's not too bad, certainly more interesting than
'High Flying Birds Volume II', but really doesn't suit what is a very forward
thinking record. The album cover too is bland and unworthy even of a mixed
album: I think it's meant to look like the Jam's 'All Mod Cons' sleeve (all
those stripes and bold typeface, though without the same punch - then again
every typeface and font going has been recycled by somebody by now). At least
'High Flying Birds' tried to be 'different' with its green neon-lighted garage
look; curious too that after a career spent moaning about having his picture
taken (which results in merely the band in small on 'Be Here Now' and the odd
single sleeve) Noel has now appeared on 100% of all the releases under his own
name; yes that's what solo singer-songwriters are meant to do nowadays but
since when did Noel do what everyone else did? (Beady Eye have kept the Oasis
tradition of appearing at best in shadowy pics in a CD's inner sleeve, though
even 1995 period Oasis would never have been as bold as to use the bare-chested
female model on 'Be').
Perhaps the biggest thing to take away from this
album though is how much further on this record is from Oasis' sound without
eradicating everything from it. Interestingly while the 'other' half of Oasis
in Beady Eye all but drop the 'wall of sound' from their albums from day one (a
couple of rockers on the first record aside), Noel - the chief architect of
that sound - has been keen to maintain it. Though there was more of it on the
first record, the fact that it's still here at all, a last bastion of 1990s
excess amongst a modern contemporary sound that's more cut-down and sparse, is
welcome. There's plenty of guitar solos too, the one thing that Beady Eye
haven't quite been able to match on their twin records (despite the fact that
Gem was drafted into Oasis in 2002 to all intents and purposes as the lead
player, with Noel moving to rhythm). Less remarkable but still a neat touch are
the many 'humanisms' Noel's been using on and off since 'Morning Glory' - a
cough here, a count-in there. It all helps to soften the blow of the
roboticness of the surroundings and is perhaps more useful in this context than
ever before, as well as a charming nod to older fans that newer fans won't
notice ort care about. You have to say too that Noel has kept much more of a
'pop' sensibility, with the catchy singalong melodies of 'Live Forever' and
'Wonderwall' cropping up occasionally (which is not an insult either: one of
the main reasons Oasis and Beatles comparisons are forever turning up are that
both right on the bubble between pop and rock, as light or as heavy as you want
them to be and thus appealing to a wider audience than bands which are merely
one or the other. It's a hard thing to pull off too: hardly any bands have
managed it since the 1960s and those that have tend to be one thing then the
other, not both simultaneously). The signs are encouraging - if only Noel can
be persuaded to stop thinking he's competing with the modern artists whose
sound is alien to him now (as it is to anyone else, like Noel, rapidly
approaching their fifties) the third High Flying Bird record might yet soar
like an eagle instead of float like a butterfly (this record) or sink like a
turkey (the first one).
Noel does seem to have taken one criticism a bit too
much to heart, though. The mutterings from many people, Oasis fans or not, on
the band's 2008 split was 'perhaps they can drop their 1960s influences
altogether at last and become a proper band!' Terrible logic as I'm sure most
people reading this largely 1960s-centred site would agree with: the reason
Oasis kept coming back to that sound wasn't just because they liked it but
because it suited them. The Oasis years 1994-1997 where everything they touched
turned to gold are brushed through with the same breezy optimism of the years
1964-1967 and the two fit like a glove, despite the fact that 1990s audiences
still tended to prefer music that was harder-edged, aggressive and more cynical
(as was inevitable for a decade coming after the artificial 1980s). Equally the
Oasis albums from 1998-2005 play nicely on the melancholia of the 1968-1970
years, where dreams are just about kept alive but music alone isn't enough to
change the world, even for rock and roll superstars. Beady Eye, typically, went
'no!' to the criticisms and if anything became even more 1960s than the end of
the Oasis period, their first record 'Different Gear, Still Speeding' reflecting 'The White Album's eclecticism and
the second 'Be' reflecting the slightly-more-polished-but-still-with-surprises
sound of 'Abbey Road' (although we compared both records to Paul McCartney's
first three records 'McCartney' 'Ram' and 'Wildlife', full of the bitterness of
the disputes of old mingled with the joy of ever-widening horizons). By
contrast 'High Flying Birds' and even more 'Chasing Yesterday' sounds like
Lennon's anaemic comeback album 'Double Fantasy' : it cares too much what
people think of it, what other 'modern' trends are doing, slides uncomfortably
between youthful and middle aged points of views in the lyrics and while
occasionally encouraging and sometimes beautiful is a poor substitute for the
daredevil ways of old or even the 'Lost Weekend' phase (it's worth pointing out
that the gap between albums from Noel is only one short of Lennon's entire
'househusband phase', but then record contracts to tend to work that way more
nowadays than in 1980). For the record, while there's less 'wrong' with 'Double
Fantasy' than, say, the newspaper politics of 'Sometime In New York City' that
record still gets a lower mark from me courtesy of not trying (or, in something
of a website catchphrase, 'its offensive in its very inoffensiveness').
The irony is that had Noel recorded his songs with a
little more of the sixties swing and had the under-rated Beady Eye been
slightly more prepared to go modern on their promising but slightly undercooked
seconds album 'Be' then both halves of Oasis would have been in a stronger
situation. Imagine an Oasis record with the better half of 'High Flying Birds'
('If I had A Gun' 'Everybody Is On The Run' 'Record Machine' 'Stop The Clocks')
with the best of 'Different Gear' ('Millionaire' 'Three Ring Circus' 'Kill For
A Dream' the glorious 'Wigwam'): not bad eh? Even with the 'missing' songs
filled in at random that's one heck of an album to be reckoned with. While not
quite as good the best halves of 'Be' ('Flick Of The Finger' 'Second Biter Of
The Apple' The Noel-referencing 'Don't Brother Me') with the four highlights
from 'Chasing Yesterday' ('Riverman' 'In The Heat Of The Moment' 'The Dying Of
The Light' 'The Right Stuff'): again
pretty good eh? The trouble is both halves of Oasis have got so used to having
merely half a record to play with each that they seem to have struggled coming
up with a full classic LP between them (though 'Different Gear' came closest):
consider 'Yesterday' as a 'core' four song album with some B-sides and it
starts to make more sense.
I've been trying hard to study this album for a
'theme' - something that's always harder to do with new releases than records
I've played endlessly for twenty odd years (though saying that I bet I've heard
'Chasing Yesterday' more than most people have heard any Oasis CD already). The
closest I can find is one of waiting to be rescued from something, or more
usually someone, often while the weather is doing weird things with,
interestingly, a few lyrics that seem to hint that Noel himself feels he's
fallen short of his lofty goals recently (despite all the usual bluster in the
press). Usually AAA members mean 'God' or 'inspiration' when they talk about
the weather (Ray Davies and George Harrison in particular do it all the time)
but I'm not sure either applies here - usually Noel is pointing towards a
'mood' in his songs like 'Cast No Shadow' or 'Turn Up The Sun' although he's
never used the metaphor as often as he does here - perhaps it just rains a lot
near Noel's house these days! 'Riverman' starts 'I travelled all this way to
make amends' and finds him 'waiting in the rain' for something to happen: he
spots a girl who 'electrifies the storm', building up the rain around him, but
soon she's gone thinking of him as just a 'memory' (Oasis fans may remember a
similar story in the fan-speaking 'Talk Tonite'). 'In The Heat Of The Moment'
has the narrator surrounded by 'lightning and thunder' protected only by 'you
at my side'. 'The Girl With X-Ray Eyes' features the same idea as 'Turn Up The
Sun' and 'If I Had A Gun', a love story with a sadder ending this time ('She
shot me to the sun, like a bullet from a gun'). 'Lock All The Doors' has Noel's
narrator 'lost and lonely on the shore' before being saved by a 'girl with a
star-shaped tambourine'; though I'm tempted to see this as Liam its more likely
Noel's returning to 'Talk Tonite's idea of fans, perhaps merging his old flame
with second wife Sara McDonald (the pair married in 2011, shortly before 'High
Flying Birds' came out). 'The Dying Of The Light' has Noel 'running for the
mountain' he's been trying to climb his whole life, only to find it further and
further out of his grasp (come on Noel, the album's not that bad!) 'The Right
Stuff' takes the opposite tack: an angel visits promising wealth but Noel stays
behind, with his frayed jeans and his frayed life, because he and his missus
are made of the 'right stuff'. 'While The Song Remains The Same' is largely a
happier song too and yet still features the narrator 'lost... miles from home'
searching for the 'sun' to shine through the 'rain'. 'The Mexican' is a
mock-'preachy' sort of a song, trying to tell the world what it 'needs' and
thinks of the world in general as 'raining on the inside, lost in a fog'. 'You
Know We Can't Go Back' is the one reference to the past (well, other than a
brief 'chasing yesterdays' in 'The Song...') and cites not the weather this
time but that other old Gallagher favourites the stars for guidance and
comfort, a grumpier companion to 'Stop Crying Your Heart Out'. Finally 'Ballad
Of The Mighty I' tries to wrap the themes of the record together, with the
narrator this time reaching the end of his long tiring journey 'to the end of
the world' , realising that the most important venue of all is 'right outside
your window'. A vow of devotion, this song promises to be there 'come heat or
rain' and leaves Noel 'waiting' for the next chapter - whatever that might be.
Hopefully there'll be a rainbow of some sort after all that changeable weather!
Overall, then, is this record any good? Well, not
yet, or at least only in bits, and had that first solo album been skipped
altogether I'd still have considered this often wet album a comedown from what
Noel was doing in Oasis. The good news is though that its only a bit wet, not
sodden like that first record, and I'm far more hopeful about Noel being able
to get back to where he once belonged sometimes in the future'; I just hope
that others feel that too and we can come back from this curious blind alley we've
flown down recently that left Noel sounding dangerous close to becoming like
everyone else. There was a laughable interview recently, with the usual good
humour of the Gallagher brothers, where Noel genuinely tried to pass his first
record off as being as 'important' as 'Definitely Maybe' and 'Morning Glory'
before showing perhaps something of his real self when he admitted that he
didn't know where this album 'stood up' to the others because it was so
'different'. In truth I'm not sure either: early indications (and I'm writing
this review the week the CD came out even though I'm a few posts ahead of
myself as usual, so not many are in yet) are that people like and admire it
without quite the same lavish devotion spent on the first album. That sounds about
right to me - certainly more right than the 'born again' sales and reviews that
greeted the last atrocity; hopefully from here onwards the way forward for the
High Flying Birds is up and onwards!
'Riverman' has a slinky groove and already the
ghostly air of the album's other jazzy style songs. While still repetitive,
there's something to get excited about in the lyric at last as the narrator
walks around the world after an argument and pauses to hear what his lover (or
possibly soon to be ex-lover) has to say next, 'cause heavy in the air are the
words she left hanging'. In contrast with the angst and agony he's been feeling
since their last argument she acts as if she can barely remember who he is - a
'memory faded' that 'slipped away again'. She doesn't even invite him inside to
what presumably is the family house, leaving him outside to wait in the rain,
longing for a rainbow that never comes to put an end to all this watery
onslaught. Together with the spooky
manner of the opening (which sounds like the guitar riff from 'Wonderwall'
being played in a minor key - something famously the elder Gallagher refused to
use in his early work as it was too 'unhappy'), this track reads like a sequel
to the sighing frustration of 'Where Did It All Go Wrong?' As the music
unravels, though, it quickly turns into another of those Gallagher epics that
little bit by little bit reaches out for hope and finds it in the form of a
joyous blistering guitar solo that's one of Noel's best of recent years. As composition
this is already light years ahead of the 'new' songs from 'High Flying Birds'
and bordering close to the excellence of 'Stop All The Clocks', the re-made
Oasis 1990s outtake on that album. However, that guitar solo and a brief
mournful sax part aside, the performance really lets the song down. The
musicians never sound as if they're playing in the same room and are all just
chugging about in their own separate ways. Even Noel's vocal is too delicate,
too soft for the world opening up for him here. So far I've not really missed
Liam's presence on Noel's songs but this sounds like one he'd have really got
his teeth into and snarled ('elec-tre-ofaaaaaahs the storm!') Still, all in all
this is promising.
'Drop me into the gap!' Noel orders his engineer at
the start of 'In The Heat Of The Moment', an apt line as it will turn out as
this is another song about looking to the future and papering over the cracks
in the present. The single catchiest solo song Noel has written so far,
bordering on manic ('Nah nah nah nah!' chatters the chorus of mocking multiple
Noels, so different to the other times Oasis have used the famous coda of Hey
Jude as per 'I'm Outta Time' and 'Love Like A Bomb', this time not so much with
the weight of the world on its shoulders so much as guilt) this track does the
typical Noel trick of old of building up layer by layer from a serious track to
a singalong. For all the catchy surroundings, though, its the lyrics that make
this one with more thought gone into them than most. Noel's reaching out to
someone he used to be close to whose going through tough times, telling us that
once they 'touched the face of God' together but now 'you have a rope around
your neck'. Noel is still in distant contact, 'talking to him on the telephone'
but his misguided former partner is still convinced he's a 'Rolling Stone' even
though his audience have upped and left. Is this song about Liam and Beady Eye
by any chance, dead in the water after their second record while this album was
being written? (Till now most of the references have been left to Liam: 'Did
you shoot your gun, get your number one?' from the wittily titled 'Don't
Brother Me' plus what we think is going on in 'Three Ring Circus' where 'Noel's
tent only has a star of one). What's interesting is that this reference comes
halfway between the digs and the genuine friendly gestures of some Beady Eye
tracks (mostly peacemaker Andy Bell's), not quite crowing but not exactly
sympathetic either: it is what it is, with Noel always sure things would turn
out that way, but Noel cares too much to let his brother fall too far from
grace and worries about him, even though according to most reports they never
meet and rarely speak to each other. Huh, families, eh?! There's even a hint at a reunion ('The more
you need it, the more you see it, the more you'll be by my side' although both
halves are still adamant it won't happen (it is a bit too soon I think - the
world still hasn't quite realised how much it misses Oasis yet, but give it
another few years of Justin Bieber and co and it might). A fascinating song
then, with much more happening than I assumed at first with that pure
Eurovision power pop chorus, but Noel handles the situation well, teasing us
with that catchy chorus several times before finally plunging us headfirst into
it. Only another slightly uninviting performance that yet again Liam would have
done better lets the song down. Presumably this is the reason why, at the time
of writing, this sensible choice as the album's first single is languishing at
a mere #26 in the UK charts when it really deserves to thrash all the singles
released from 'High Flying Birds'.
'The Girl With X-Ray Eyes' isn't too bad either, it
just sounds naggingly familiar somehow, with some cascading 'Strawberry Fields'
style mellotron, a walking pace tempo and an idea and melody lifted wholesale
mostly from Jefferson Starship until the end of each line where the 'i-e-ise' hiccup
is pure Buddy Holly. By now, too, the songs have followed a pattern that
desperately needs to be broken but Noel is back using his favourite template
again, the song rising and falling piecemeal until we finally get to a delayed
chorus. As a result this song is more successful when I hear it singly, nestled
amongst other AAA gems on my mp3 player's 'randometer', than it does as track
three on this album. While the melody gets boring quickly anyway, as per the
first album, there's another good lyrics going on here with Noel once more
unusually passive during the course of the song. This time it's 'him' in
freefall, quoting an old Oasis B-side as he's 'going nowhere...down a hill' and
the fact worries him, leaving him 'shaking like a leaf'. However there's a girl
with 'X-Ray Eyes' who sees through his 'disguise' and follows all the 'clues'
he's left, seeing beneath the false bravado and sending words of comfort in his
hour of needs, bucking up his confidence to take on the mad world alone while
the vulturous mellotron and a scary 'Magical Mystery Tour' style guitar part squeaks
alongside him. She sounds very much like the fan in 'Talk Tonight' who gave
Noel the faith to carry on with Oasis during one of their earliest and nastiest
breakups, seeing every layer and promise in the songs that Noel confesses he
thought no one else would get. This could even be a memory of those same
events, the pair talking long into the night and 'swallowing all space and
time' because she has to be somewhere else the next day ('In the morning she
was gone'). However her work was done - the narrator feels much happier about
things and finds new inner strength, Noel's best vocal on the album building in
confidence with each passing verse until fading out on a far more comforting
final mellotron note that sounds like the taming of a wild beast. This lyric
isn't anywhere near to being as inspired or as heartfelt as 'Talk Tonight', one
of my favourite Oasis pieces (which is what suggests to me it might be a memory
rather than a second encounter) but still has its moments including the best
couplet on the album: 'Life, it stretches on for miles - the truth is on your
stereo' (hmm that might have to become a new website banner!)
'Lock All The Doors', though, is a pointless remake
of those huffing and puffing Oasis rockers of old, performed by a band who
don't really have the drive or hunger that made these early pieces so enjoyable
(huh and Noel was being rude about Beady Eye trying to sound like 'Beatles and
Stones'!) At least the lyrics start well, with another mysterious girl with a
'star shaped tambourine' 'prettiest girl I'd seen' standing lonely on the
shoreline staring at him, wondering what went wrong (Liam? The 'Talk Tonight'
girl? Someone we haven't met yet? A figment of his imagination? I'm still
tempted by the former, as unlikely as that sounds, thanks to this tracks'
opening haunting mellotron riff playing exactly the same note as Liam's 'Born
On A Different Cloud', a song we supposed on this site to be 'about' Noel, as
if a compliment is being repaid thirteen years on). However the chorus is
awful, an irritating wannabe pop song shout of 'Lock all the doors! Maybe
they'll never find us!...Get down on the floor!' that makes no sense in the
context of the song. We never hear who the narrator is hiding from, who he's
hiding with (the mysterious girl was still left on the shore last time we met
her) or what the narrator 'could be sure, like never before, this time' of. Is
this Noel hiding from his brother? (it sounds like something an elder brother
would do to a younger sibling, denying his existence and blocking him out while
'still feeling you under my skin'). Is it an ex looming from the surfaces of
his memory while he leaps into his barricaded family home for comfort? ('We
might never live to meet again!' he cries, as if fearing the danger outside).
Alas what might have been an interesting song is a verse away from making sense
and the performance isn't interesting enough to make you want to care anyway.
Even so, as much as I unlikely this song, at least it doesn't suffer from the
woeful pretentiousness of the 'High Flying Birds' album - as opposed to
delightful pretentiousness as per some of our wordy AAA favourites including some
Oasis classics (D'yer Know What I Mean?' may have one of the most pretentious
lyrics of them all, but it still makes perfect sense because we do in fact
'know what yer meant'. Pretentious, moi?)
'The Dying Of The Light' is an interesting sequel to
'Stop The Clocks' that again worries about death and what changes the narrator
may see ('But if I'm already dead how will I know?'), nowhere near as powerful
and far more glossy but a welcome return to a subject big enough to be explored
by both these songs and the equally excellent 'Masterplan'. Noel worries about
all the paths he missed, that he should have crossed but didn't and in another
classic album couplet argues that 'I tried my best to get there but I couldn't afford
the bus fare' - that things got big and out of hand so quickly it robbed him of
the momentum he needed to get to his wanted destination under his own steam. It's
the kind of thing he worried about on 'Shoulders Of Giants' with the sighing
despair of 'Sunday Morning Call' and 'Where Did IT All Go Wrong?' with a
similar nagging mellotron part to both that chimes away like a bell, going
'ding ding ding' to remind the narrator that time is running out. However this
isn't an unhappy song: the narrator's desire to get 'there' at all expense
('There was no time for getting old when I was young') still rages within him,
but it's been tempered by other goals, by delightful sideways sojourns that he
never expected when he was young. Now that he knows what love truly is, and has
a family, the narrator can finally face 'the dying of the light' with a modicum
of peace, realising that will it might not be 'the' dream at least 'a' dream
special to him came true. Alas another truly exceptional lyric is let down by a
melody that's simply unworthy of it, doddering around from A to B which may be
thematically apt but doesn't have that wider sense of 'journey' and realisation
that a song like this needs. The performance too is awful: this isn't a band that
understands this song at all and are simply playing all the notes, without the
feelings of emptiness, longing and eventual hope that ought to be there. Oasis in
either classic line-up would have picked up all this up by osmosis, without any
words needing to be spoken. With tracks like this, it doesn't matter how clever
the driver is or how excellent the 'map' he's drawn is if the car he's trying
to get the mountain in is an old jalopy with a clapped out motor.
Thankfully everything comes together on 'The Right
Stuff', the last of the album's classic tracks and perhaps the highest moment.
The High Flying Birds sound strangely 'right' playing jazz in a way that they never
do playing rock or pop: brothers Paul and Jeremy Stacey lock into a groove on
bass and drums that's haunting and hypnotic, especially wrapped around a
mellotron (probably played by Noel - there's no guitar here which must be a
first!) Jim Hunt's delightful sax playing and best of all Joy Rose's backing
vocals, which wrap their way round Noel's sleepy lead as if dragging him on. There
aren't many lyrics on this track, but it doesn't need them, the short haiku
like phrases saying all they need to say very quickly. An 'angel' turns up with
an offer (we don't find out what for - possibly it's for an Oasis reunion) but
Noel's narrator quickly sees them for the 'devil' they are and rather than hand
over his 'soul' (a major thing in Oasis songs, from 'Cast No Shadow' on down
where it tends to refer to 'personality') he sends the angel packing 'because
you and I got the right stuff'. A rare song of confidence on an album that runs
low on it, the realisation that Noel still has the power to decide his own
future has a delightful effect upon him, causing his sub-conscious to pierce
through the song's hazy dreamscape with one of his best middle eights in years.
'When your heart gets shattered and your jeans get frayed and you change the
morning at the end of the day!...' he yells, venting all the problems of the
past few years without the band as a comfort blanket (trapped by homelife and
keeping 'regular' hours, aging - Noel's talked a lot recently about approaching
50 and fearing losing his hair ion particular - and losing not just a band and
way of life but a 'real' brother and two 'honorary' brothers) and yet finding
that, despite all that, he'd never trade his current life for a second: he's
happily married, loves his home life over life on the road and knows he's on to
a good thing. The song sounds like it too, with all the 'danger' that Noel used
to feature in his writing regularly in the early Oasis years but which hasn't
been heard for ever such a long time to the fore again (2002 or 2005 depending
on whether you consider 'The Importance Of Being Idle' as a breakthrough song
or a rip-off from a different eras of The Kinks for a change). Another stunning
guitar solo, haunting and yet brimming with confidence, shows just how much this
song 'means' to Noel and having a band 'in tune' with his ideas for once brings
out easily the best performance of his solo career so far, pushing him on to
new heights. With this track Noel had indeed found the ';right stuff' - let's
hope there's a lot more songs like this one on the next run of albums! (It
might be worth mentioning the abandoned 'Amorphous Androgynous' remix album
here - planned to fill the gap between albums but abandoned late in the day
because it 'wasn't working', this project would have seen 'High Flying Birds'
re-styled in a form approaching this, elongated and moody; interestingly that
very team of remixers get a credit on this album but not for any specific track
- though I'm almost certain it's this one they worked on).
'While The Song Remains The Same' is a return to the
old days and a song that could easily have graced any Oasis album of their
career. Unfortunately its one of those plodding repetitive Noel tracks that
almost always turned out to be the worst ones - the tracks written simply to
'sound' like Oasis and give the fanbase something to boogie to between
experiments rather than with any great design. The usual clumsy Noel lyrics are
out in force on this one - though to be fair it's for the first time across the
album - as he sings a bunch of jumbled up phrases about 'fireflies on an empty
road' 'a place where the sun shines through the rain' 'taking you back where I
was born' and 'finding pleasure in the pain'. All we're missing is a 'meeting
with my maker' and something about wanting to live forever and we'd have the
whole set in our patent pending AAA game of 'Noel Gallagher Bingo' (available
in no good toy stores and a few bad ones). The melody too sounds like lots of
old favourites stuck inside a blender: the 'on and on and on' chorus recalls
'Hello', there's a touch of 'Don't Look Back In Anger' about the melody and a
drum shuffle straight from 'Love Like A Bomb' (admittedly a 'Liam' song but one
based around getting Zak Starkey to play a 'typical' Alan White drum part). Even
Noel's guitar solo sounds second-hand in this one. A bit of a lapse.
'The Mexican' has a lot of the old clichés too:
crowds singing about 'revolution' while lots of young hippies take drugs. However
at this one sounds good, with a nice purr between the guitar and bass and some
of the best drumming on the album as well as more backing vocals, this time
from Vula Malinga which again are highly impressive (who'd have thought Noel's
voice would have gone so well with female vocals an octave higher after so many
years hearing him singing in fourths or fifths above his brother's snarl?) The
guitar burst is also genuinely thrilling in an Oasis style way. So why don't we
consider this song one of the better tracks on the album? Well, the lyrics are
a bit mean. This track is basically a put down of hip young wannabes trying to
do everything Oasis once did. Nothing wrong in that as such, but rather than
warn them about the traps Noel fell into himself (drugs, excess, believing your
own press, doubts and insecurities) he spends most of the song seemingly
laughing - or at least that's what the 'wah wah wah wah' chorus sounds like to
me, an ungenerous unsettling chortling noise. Noel sounds as if he's laughing
at his fans a bit too, especially those who stills party like it's 1995 and
haven't grown up yet - perhaps missing the point that after turning thirty in
1997 when his drug-taking was at its peak he probably has less right to laugh
at teenage posers with bad habits than most. Noel's admitted that this song was
a last minute extra he didn't know was going to make the album till the last
minute but kept in to 'lighten the mood'. In truth, only the boogieing power
pop riff lightens the mood - the lyrics
about people too young and stupid to realise they're dicing with death doesn't
lighten the mood at all but is instead uncharitable and unbecoming of a writer whose
talent has rarely if ever been used to put people 'down' before now (interviews
yes, songs no): Noel might not want to be the 'father figure' but surely a song
about the dangers a la the glorious Oasis B-side 'Cigarettes In Hell' is a much
better way of putting the message across than a laughing 'wah wah wah wah wah'.
The equation between Mexicans and drug taking is also unworthy of him (for the
record this song could be set anywhere and there's no real mention even of
smuggling drugs across a border as the song implies; what's wrong with naming
this track after the chorus 'lost in a fog' which nicely sums up coke-driven
confusion and white clouds?)
'You Know We Can't Go Back' isn't as bad, but isn't
exactly special either. It's another Oasis style pop-rocker that sounds
naggingly familiar and doesn't come close to the dangers of the best of the
album songs and features another truly awful performance, with some
questionable clattering drums that make Tony McCarroll sound like Keith Moon,
but a strong tune and a pleasing Noel lead vocal will make this a winner as a
single if the band get as far as releasing a third. Interestingly the lyrics
again start off miserable and sad, with Noel unusually insecure, waking up in
'silence' for the first time - the music having deserted him - and calling to
himself that actually 'it's alright'. Has Noel been suffering from writer's
block? The four year gap and this song's lyrics certainly suggest it, while the
fact that in total Noel has released only 24 new songs (and four re-workings of
old ones) in seven years is far below his 'old' workrate (to be fair he's also
been busy as a husband and father, something guaranteed to slow creativity down
as many previous AAA bands have proved). The 'yes I'll find you' chorus is
particularly saddening, without the many layers the young and hungry Gallagher
would have given the song. After hearing this and the comments made about his
own writing Ed Sheeran must be giggling his socks off!
The album tries to go back to what worked so well on
the first half with another bluesy beaty hypnotic epic closer but 'The Ballad
Of The Mighty I' doesn't quite come together somehow. Once again the
performance is sloppy, even with special guest Johnny Marr adding a touch of
characteristic Smiths style guitar grunt, while Noel's shrill vocal is tough to
interpret. Not that the lyrics are that great when you do, with what could have
been an interesting song gets lost in there somewhere, turning into another
mush about following stars as he 'strikes up the band for one last time'. The
song seems to be a return to the scene of first track 'Riverman' but where that
track tried something a bit different, waiting anxiously in the rain for an
answer that might never come, this song's affirmative 'yes' is just more lazy
songwriting as Noel touches on all the 'optimistic' songs he's ever written
without ever sounding as if he believes it, promising to walk the ends of the
Earth again in joy. The music does the normal twist of reaching from the depths
of despair to greatness via tremendous
build - but then does nothing with it, teasing us over and over before finally
hitting one of the most anti-climatic choruses of Noel's career ('Ahhhh'll
faaaahnd yoooooo! Yes I'll faaaahnd yooo!') that once again demonstrates that
Oasis were at their worst when confusing Slade's simple stupidity for The
Beatles' brightness and treating both the same. There's even the return of the
dreaded pretentious song titles AKA what the hell was going on during the first
LP, which is a shame (is this song in fact an outtake from that LP? It sounds
more like 'High Flying Birds' to me, clunky and unfinished, as if several
promising pieces of a song have been stapled together at random). What a shame
that, after such a promising start, things come undone so quickly and so badly
across the second half of this album.
Ah well, at least the first half is still there,
with four songs that are deeper and stranger and better than I feared Noel;
might ever be again after the hopelessness of the first LP. Any album that adds
new styles and does them well to an album that doesn't forget the glories of
the past is an album to treasure and had the core quartet from this album come
out as an EP rather than padded out as an album I'd be the first Oasis fan out
there with my flag flying saying that Noel G's done it again for the first time
in decades. Once again I curse the fact that Oasis are no more, simply because
this half of an album added to the Beady Eye half on album might have been the
best thing the band had ever made - but then again given what was going on in
the first album would Noel have even realised what the best half of this album
was anymore? (Would we just have had all the songs that sound most like 'AKA
What A Life?') Would Beady Eye? (most of the best tracks from their second record
were written during the making of the first and would have made it an even
stronger LP). Only time will tell is this is a 'real' stepping stone back to
greatness the way that 'High Flying Birds' was treated as but fell woefully
short of or whether Noel again listens to all the publicity and can get away
with recycling Oasis songs again for the next time. I hope though that the
jazzier tracks from this album aren't a cul-de-sac and instead open the doors
towards what could be a brilliant future with Noel's pull on modern music as
strong as it ever was. Based on the best of this album, where things finally
slide into place, that third album could well be a treat.
A Now Complete List Of
Oasis and Related Articles To Read At Alan’s Album Archives:
'Definitely Maybe' (1994) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/news-views-and-music-issue-105-oasis.html
'(What's The Story?) Morning Glory' (1995) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/oasis-whats-story-morning-glory-1996.html
'The Masterplan' (B sides compilation) (1998) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-99-oasis-masterplan-1998.html
'Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants' (1999) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/news-views-and-music-issue-44-oasis.html
'Definitely Maybe' (DVD soundtrack) (2000) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/news-views-and-music-issue-2-oasis.html
‘Heathen Chemistry’ (2002) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/oasis-heathen-chemistry-2002.html
‘Don’t Believe The Truth’ (2005) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/oasis-dont-believe-truth-2005.html
'Dig Out Your Soul' (2008) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/05/oasis-dig-out-your-soul-2008-heavily.html
'Different Gear, Still Speeding' (Beady Eye) (2011) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/news-views-and-music-issue-93-beady-eye.html
'Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds' (2011) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/news-views-and-music-issue-119-noel.html
‘Be’ (Beady Eye) (2013) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/beady-eye-be-2013-album-review.html
'Chasing Yesterdays' (Noel Gallagher's High Flying
Birds) (2015) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/noel-gallaghers-high-flying-birds.html
As You Were (Liam Gallagher) (2017) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/liam-gallagher-as-you-were-2017.html
Who Built The Moon? (Noel Gallagher’s High Flying
Birds) (2017) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/noel-gallaghers-high-flying-birds-who.html
Why Me? Why Not! (Liam Gallagher, 2019) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2019/09/liam-gallagher-why-me-why-not-2019.html
The Best Unreleased Oasis Recordings 1992-2013 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/oasis-best-unreleased-recordings-1992.html
Surviving TV Clips 1994-2009: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/oasis-surviving-tv-clips-1994-2009.html
Compilation/Live/Solo Albums: 1994-2010 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/oasis-compilationliveb-sides-albums.html
Non-Album Songs Part One: 1993-1998
Non-Album Songs Part Two: 2000-2015
Landmark Concerts and Key Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/06/oasis-five-landmark-concerts-and-three.html
Essay: Living Forever – Where Did It All Go Wrong? https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/04/oasis-essay-living-forever-where-did-it.html
