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Oasis "Dig Out Your Soul" (2008)
Bag It Up/The Turning/Waiting For The Rapture/The
Shock Of The Lightning/I'm Outta Time/(Get Off Your) High Horse Lady/Falling
Down/To Be Where There's Life/Ain't Got Nothin'/The Nature Of Reality/Soldier
On
'Whose to say that you
were right and I was wrong? Come the day, come the night I'll be gone...soldier
on' or 'I'm tired - come get me off the merry-go-round'
''Most reviewers of
this new album—the band’s 7th studio CD in 14 years—have been decidedly unkind,
more than they have been in a decade or more, dismissing this album as ’more of
the same old stuff’ and as a CD that soaks up all you’ll ever want to know in one hearing. Sadly, by Oasis’ high
standards, the verdict is more or less right—but for the complete opposite of
the reasons that are usually given. ‘Soul’ is something of a step backwards or
at least sideways after the growing sophistication of ‘Heathen Chemistry’ and
‘Don’t Believe The Truth’, but underneath its typical Oasis production sheen
it’s actually quite an adventurous little album that tries valiantly to mover
the Oasis sound away from crunching rockers and into trance-like dance numbers.
The influences here aren’t compact singles by The Beatles and The Jam so much
as the complex epics by the Stone Roses and loads of forgotten swirly
psychedelic one-hit wonders, for better or for worse. And, like all Oasis
albums from the third album onwards, it grows with every listen.
The reason most critics
seem to be having field day kicking Oasis again isn’t the fault of this record
so much as the timing of it. ‘Definitely Maybe’ and ‘Morning Glory’ summed up
their eras uncannily well and for his first few years in the limelight Noel
Gallagher seemed to have an enviable magic touch about judging what his
audience were thinking and feeling throughout the band’s earliest years. After
skirting on the edges of critical acceptance for the second time around (2002’s
Chemistry and 2005’s Truth both received reviews along the lines of ‘best Oasis
album since the first two’), the most popular 1990s band discounting the Spice
Girls (why oh why?!?) have hit another brick wall in terms of critical
acceptance and this time its not really their fault. In this age of the credit
crunch and pop idol wanna-bees it seems that guitar bands, sneery singers and
songs this massive, epic and loud are out of fashion once again. Oasis have
been here before— the long awaited ’Be Here Now’ (1997) came out literally days
after Princess Diana’s funeral when the British psyche seemed to turn inward
and reflective overnight and people wanted slow, primal ballads rather than
overblown rock epics. Like that album, had Oasis released their latest magnum
opus when they wanted to (ie July—Noel Gallgher reportedly told the record
company to wait till October so that the group could watch England play in the
world cup, little knowing they’d be knocked out at the qualifying stage) it
would have fared so much better than it has done come the Autumn. A re-issue of
Noel’s fine acoustic flip-sides or perhaps Oasis’ MTV Unplugged concert might
have been a better bet for the current climate —but, uncannily like the mood of
the nation nine years ago, this is an album ‘outta time’. By and large, Oasis
haven’t done massive-sounding rock epics since 1997, but this time the band are
better suited to the genre and the epics aren’t quite as overblown as before
and the result is a brave if largely un-needed attempt to stretch their old
sound once again.
Alas, while many of
these songs do shine out after a handful of playings, too many of them sound
the same on first hearing, something I don’t think I’ve ever had to say about
any earlier Oasis album. Noel has talked a great deal in the album’s
pre-publicity about how his songs all seemed to fit a ‘trance’ groove and how
he encouraged his fellow Oasisians to see if they could write something
similar. While an interesting idea on paper, the practical upshot of this is
that the old Oasis energy has turned to lethargy for the most part, with many
songs going on for far too long or simply sounding like a repeat of the track
that was on before and you often don’t notice that the song has actually
changed. Another nice and typically Oasis idea in principle— a soundbite from
John Lennon’s last radio interview with Andy Peebles, broadcast on December 6th
1980 – doesn’t actually add that much to the song, mainly because the mix is so
poor you can’t actually tell what Johnny Rhythm is saying (and when you do
decipher it, Lennon’s speech about there being ‘hope while there’s life’ only
four days before his death makes Liam’s sentiment about making every day count
sound more hopeless than hopeful).
Liam’s songs have been
progressing nicely throughout the last three albums and his contributions are
once again the ‘sleepers’ on this album, the mournful ballads that grow on you
after every listen. For a writer whose only had six previous songs to his
credit, the three compositions here are all pretty impressive—though having
said that, none are as good as Liam’s gems which were all undisputed highlights
of the ‘Don’t Believe The Truth’ album of 2005. Noel’s songs are, just as on
that last album, caught halfway between sticking limply to an old Oasis sound
and trying something brave and new. When they work, they work really well—and
when they don’t, reach for the skip button. Noel seemed to lose his
songwriter’s confidence badly around the millennium judging by his rather
tentative work since (despite several characteristic interviews braggingly
telling us what a genius he still is) and his writer’s block still hasn’t quite
healed itself judging by his six songs here, which still appear to be feeling
their way round to what they want to say, instead of going for the jugular in
classic old Oasis style. Worryingly, Noel seems to have written all of his six
songs in the space of two 24-hour writing sessions according to interviews, sandwiched
in between picking Gem’s kids up from school—and sadly this time there’s no
magical three-minute bursts of despair like ‘Little By Little’ or ‘Gas Panic!’
to raise the emotion of the album. Depressingly, too, guitarist Gem and bassist
Andy Bell’s contributions contribute just one song apiece and frustratingly the
line-up that seemed to have settled in nicely during the ‘Truth’ sessions was
disrupted yet again, with drummer Zak Starkey already committed to working on
another project (the band get by with Noel playing the drums on a few
tracks—indeed, the most impressive thing about this whole album is that
everyone except Liam seems to have suddenly become a multi-instrumentalist, all
three playing bass, keyboards and guitar according to the credits).
Some of the new ideas
do work, however, and they work well. ’Shock Of The Lightning’ is classic
Oasis, a stomping rocker which sounds traditional and adventurous all at once,
although it could have done with a few more twists and turns to it to make it a
true Oasis classic. ‘I’m Outta Time’ tries perhaps a bit too hard to tear at
our heart-strings, but Oasis are masters at recording spine-tingling ballads
and this song of Liam’s about trying to find out where you belong is an
interesting close cousin to ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’ and ‘Let There Be
Love’. ‘Falling Down’ is an interesting Noel-sung foray into American
psychedelia— the more paranoid, chaotic branch of the genre— coming complete
with a Mellotron accompaniment and an urgent guitar riff. It sounds like The
Zombies re-interpreting the ’Beatles Love’ version of Tomorrow Never Knows/
Within You Without You and is all the better for it! Gem’s ‘To Be Where There’s
Life’ is another interesting ‘grower’ song, the most overtly psychedelic Oasis
have been since the under-rated ‘Who Feels Love?’ single in 2000 and it’s a
genre Oasis have always managed a pretty high strike-rate with and nice to hear
again. Bassist Andy Bell even gets to show off his sitar playing for the first
time on an Oasis track! Closer ‘Soldier On’ is another interesting experiment,
this time from Liam again, somehow transforming itself from a ploddy rocker
into a full blown epic about marching on over obstacles and not letting them
get you down. Its not quite up to Liam’s severely under-rated ‘Born On A
Different Cloud’ (from ’Heathen Chemistry’), but at least he’s ripping off his
better compositions here instead of giving us ‘Songbird’ for the 11th time!
It’s also the one track here you wish would run for another couple of verses,
so that the band can build up a true head of steam instead of letting the
groove slip away from them.
The rest of the album
is mildly disappointing by comparison, simply because there’s not that much to
get your teeth into, although there’s only actually one un-listenable track
here—Noel’s ’Get Off Your High Horse, Lady’, which is basically Carl Perkins’
’Hi-Heeled Sneakers’ sung through a loud of electronic voice distortion effects
for four minutes — which still isn’t that bad a ratio for an 11-track album.
Somehow, though, this is an album that sounds less than the sum of its parts,
with even the best material average until you stick your CD player on ‘random’.
A bad running order has been the downfall of many an Oasis album—sadly this one
is especially poor, putting all of Noel’s songs at the beginning and the three
most similar-sounding tracks as numbers one, two and three. The title ‘Dig Out
Your Soul’ is also curious, showing up the faults of the album rather than its
strengths—what we get are 18 slices of slow-burning grooves, with three rockers
sandwiched in the middle, with even Noel’s guitar solos and Liam’s spurts of
anger or defiance sounding somewhat muted in the mix, as if all the tracks have
been white-washed to remove any sense of emotion, never mind soul. Ultimately,
then, this isn’t the sort of album Oasis badly needed right now. It isn’t the
album that’s going to recapture the band’s old audience and its not going to
add many new converts to its list of fans, simply because it doesn’t have the
power to move or get involved that all their other albums so far have done.
What it does do though is add another couple of new directions for the Oasis
sound to travel in — and make us wait hopefully that the next album might see
real return to form.'
Hello again: it's now
2015, the Spice Girls have been gone fifteen years not five (yippee!), Obama is at the
end of his career not the fresh faced youngster he was the last time I wrote
about this album and David Cameron has gone from cuddly posh twit to pig-mating
monster: only one of these developments is unpredictable. What I think I sensed
if I remember rightly, but which doesn't seem to have appeared in my review, is
how 'final' a lot of this album sounded. I would love to say that I had a great
sixth sense that the band had come to the natural road and picked up on the
obvious clues that now in retrospect seem strewn like confetti across the
record. However I think I got most of the gist of what was happening from
reading Oasis fansites, who were already exploding with rumours of backstage
bust-ups and thrown satsumas even back then. I've been waiting the past seven
years to see if we would ever get to the bottom of just why Oasis split up when
they did and nobody seems to quite agree on what happened and why, although
several long-term and short-term factors seem to have come to a head, with no
'Talk Tonight' style 'fan' to talk Noel out of quitting this time around. By
2009 the band were tired: their renaissance had tided over but had never quite
matched the heights of their first career, while not quite every fan was as enamoured
with Gem and Andy as Noel and Liam clearly were.
Though fans largely
long for any line-up of Oasis nowadays, at the time there was still a lingering
feeling that this line-up wasn't as good as the 'real' thing and seven years in
that was becoming a bit of a grind. The single worst mistake Oasis made of the
period was how they handled the circa -2003 row between Liam and drummer Alan
White. The band needed every link to their old sound they could get and great
as Zak Starkey is across 'Don't Believe The Truth' and moist of this album, he
doesn't have quite the same range and power (though he's still blooming good: in fact all four Oasis drummers, with Chris
Sharrock arriving for the tour to promote this album though he's not actually
on the record, are excellent choices). Even more than his abilities as a
drummer, though, Whitey was a valuable buffer between the two brothers - a
great musical ally to Noel and before some fight or other a great pal and
drinking buddy with Liam. Junior members Gem and Andy, though they more than
earned their stripes on the altar of broken eggshells and family counselling,
hadn't been through as much shared experience and so could never get what it
was 'really' like to be a rock and roll star of the first league. The brotherly
feud between Liam and Noel, kept at bay through success hard work and
achievement, was beginning to heat up as the band took longer between albums
and found themselves a peg or two lower in the music scene whenever they put
their heads over the parapet. Noel was irked at the way Liam turned up late for
sessions, delayed his vocals and wouldn't sing with the band - the fact that
Liam recorded both of his post-Oasis records in exactly this way in the blink
of a (Beady) Eye suggests that the younger brother found it hard to work with
the older one. Being in a band is hard work - being a band with a family member
who knows you well doubly so, as the Davies brothers in the Kinks or the
Knopflers in Dire Straits will tell you: it's very hard to showboat and act
like you know everything when you're in the same room as someone who can dish
the dirt on you. Until near the end the rivalry between the one who wrote the
songs and got all the applause and adulation that way and the one who sang them
and got the plaudits that way has been good for the band: Noel gets a whole new
layer of meaning to his songs he'd never have got singing himself (what he
lacks most with his High Flying Birds records - it's all too 'nice' and
one-layered), while Liam gets to sing direct, without having to filter what his
brother records and sees, representing a particular 'generation' that Noel can
feel slightly detached from (the problem with the Beady Eye records, though
less so: they don't have the same 'link' to their audience anymore, with Liam
coping with shifting characters and backgrounds, something that rarely happened
with Oasis). But nowadays Noel's songs are drying up and it's hard work balancing
a connection with your old audience who have partly turned their back on you
while staying true and 'real' to your credentials, the way that Oasis always
vowed. Liam, too has started writing and though less prolific is, creatively,
going toe to toe in this period, while Noel is writing more and more personal
songs about family and the new love in his life - wife Sara - and more
reluctant to hand them over to Liam.
A stewpot of tensions
that had been simmering loudly for fifteen years came to a head backstage when
Liam announced that he wanted a freebie advert for his clothing range 'Pretty
Green' in the back of the band's latest tour brochure. It seems a fair request
to me - it wasn't like it was on the front page and came with Liam's name
attached, not the bands and if the assumption of getting one for free was a
little cheeky, then isn't being cheeky what the Oasis ethos was all about? Liam
was also suffering from laryngitis, a complaint he suffered from a lot during
the Oasis years (probably as a result of giving his all in every take, every
performance, every time - seriously there's never been even an outtake from
1994 onwards where Liam isn't at full throttle) which meant that his brother
would have to do more singing: this was something the band could get round in
1996 (when Noel sang the MTV concert solo), but the songs were harder and the
band less drilled than they had been. Noel, after several tense dark gigs where
the band weren't playing well, seems to have been looking for an excuse to lash
out and chose this one. Somewhere along the way a piece of fruit got thrown (a
tangerine? A satsuma?) and in the time it took for it to connect with one or
other Gallagher brother (though odds seem to be on Noel throwing it at Liam) and
in retaliation a broken guitar (probably Noels') a seventeen year old musical
journey came unpeeled. Oasis didn't have many gigs to play, with their last
performance (unknown to the crowd at the time) suitably coming back home at
Manchester on June 8th 2008; the fight occurred backstage at the V Festival on
August 26th 2008, still a couple of months before this album's release (though
no mention was ever made in the official publicity, the hope being that the
pair could still patch things up).
In retrospect the split
seems obvious - so obvious I can't believe I didn't pick it up (although part
of me was, perhaps, in denial: most bands I follow split up long before I was
born, with all albums from beginning to end already made: this journey was one
I'd lived through in 'real' time and far more personal).It's mean and loud for
a start, neatly bookending a career that was a lot more varied than critics
ever gave the band credit for with a return to 'Definitely Maybe' style
stomping. Only instead of pretty songs about how great life will be when the
band 'make' it, the band sound weary and wondering when it will all stop. Usually
the more Oasis want us to hear something, the more acoustic they'll make an
album, with the more 'real' the inspiration the more likely that it will be
played on acoustic guitar (the Wonderwalls, Cast No Shadows, Songbirds, and
Sunday Morning Calls). This album is the only Oasis album not to have a single
acoustic song and most of the lyrics are hard to hear, replaced not so much by
a wall of noise as a sea of destruction, with everything thrown at these
arrangements a la 'Be Here Now' (a similar record made in similar trying circumstances).
It's there too in the
lyrics: 'The freaks are rising up through the floor!' warns stinging opener
'Bag It Up', itself a kind of 'final' act, as if Oasis are being put away in a
drawer somewhere. 'The Turning' longs for something different, after 'mining
our dreams for the same old song'. 'I'm tired - come get me off the
merry-go-round' pleads Noel on 'Waiting For The Rapture', a song about waiting
for someone - anyone - to offer a way out of a prison and surely the nastiest
sounding love song ever made. 'The Shock Of The Lightning' is about inspiration
and as such is an obvious candidate for most oasis moment, with a sudden surge
of the old tightness, adrenalin and optimism. It remains, however, a song about
trying to bottle something that's fleeting, as if admitting that most Oasis
albums are hard work, perspiration more than inspiration (the fact that the
song goes badly round in circles and starts blatantly nicking even more from
The Beatles than usual only emphasises the point). 'I'm Outta Time' is surely
the biggest clue on the record - a Liam-written ballad that sounds like a coda
to 'Rock and Roll Star', about how much the band were going to say and do and
how they only got time for some of it. The track even ends with an eerie
extract from one of the last interviews John Lennon ever gave in December 1980,
another great gone too soon. Liam tries to be brave and look to the future and
accept the need to 'grow', but this doesn't sound like a positive song to me,
more a lament for a great thing ending. 'Falling Down' is Noel's turn to lament
the changing world, a scary psychedelic journey which sounds like the worst
acid trip ever as something 'blows my mind' and he realises that 'it's time to
kiss the world goodbye - falling around all that I've ever known'. Gem's 'To Be
Where There's Life' tries to back away from the conflict, a reminder that life
is what you make of it, but though it sounds as if it was written in the old happy-go-lucky
style that's not how it's performed here with the biggest Liam sneer of the
record and a bass riff that comes with boxing gloves: 'Days turn into nights,
pray from the light, let me come through, let me take you way over the line...'
Liam's spiky punk song 'Ain't Got Nothin' spits at naysayers and critics and
maybe even his own brother as he admits that he's got nothing left and being 'set
off like a fuse'. Trust Andy to play philosophiser and peacemaker but even 'The
Nature Of Reality' (which sounds like every oasis riff ever stuck in a blender)
is a career overview that's only half-pleased with itself, with Andy's narrator
having seen 'heaven and hell' together. The album and the band's career (at
least for the for-seeable future) then end with Liam's 'Soldier On', a track
effectively condensed to just the two brothers (with Noel on drums) and lifted
from a demo made early in the sessions and overdubbed with sound effects which
captures the downhome beat of the mood in the room rather well. It seems inevitable
somehow that the last song on an Oasis album (a career that started with the
hope and glory of 'Supersonic' and 'Rock and Roll Star') should end with an
argument: whose to say that I was right and you were wrong?' while Liam sadly
urges the band to 'Soldier On', an argument that's drowned out little bit by
little bit first by a Scottish clan bagpipes (a sign perhaps of family ties?)
and a squeal of noise that obliterates everything in sight. It sounds, oddly
enough, like a piece of fruit hovering in the air about to go splatt, although
the final row wasn't until long after these sessions. (In case you're wondering why it isn't here,
worst-song-in-ten-years 'High Horse Lady' is, to borrow a Noel phrase, 'absolute
nonsense').
But is this career
finale any good? Well, it's heart is in the right place - in a neat reflection
of The Beatles' 'Let It Be' everyone is doing everything for the right reasons,
with more of a 'live' feel and a punch long missing from the last few albums,
along with a pretty nifty collection of songs (oh yes it is: I'd take
'Let It Be' 'Two Of Us' 'The Long and Winding Road' 'Dig A Pony' and 'Don't Let
Me Down' over everything on 'Abbey Road' not written by George Harrison).
However the mood in the room is too sad for it to work: Liam hasn't got the
chance to soar and he's too tired of the fight to sneer. Noel seems to have
already moved on, saving his best songs of the period for himself (of his half
a dozen songs only 'Lightning' and 'Falling' come close to old classics and he
had at least three future classics available at these sessions: 'Record
Machine', which really was recorded at these sessions whatever it says on the
band's Wikipedia page, 'If I Had A Gun' and 'Everybody Is On The Run' (Noel has
also claimed to have heard a 'good half' of the first Beady Eye record at the
sessions, though that seems doubtful given that 9/10ths of it is about fighting
back after the split). Returning to the production trickery of 'Be Here Now'
while keeping the songs short and the mood focussed should have been the way to
go after three straight of albums of paring things largely back to basics and
I'd never say no to hearing Oasis go psychedelic, as they frequently do across
this record. I even love the band's last and best 'weird' publicity attempt:
handing out sheet music for four key album songs (the three future singles
plus, bizarrely, 'Get Off Your High Horse Lady') to buskers up and down the
country along with a donation to get the whole nation 'singing' like yesteryear
when we were all going to live forever and the world was mad fer Oasis.
But this isn't an album
you can see anyone singing along to. Despite or sometimes because of the wall
of noise, Oasis records usually have big hearts and just enough of a big mind
behind them to stand up to repeated playings (though the first two Oasis albums
are immediate, the others all get better the more you hear them). But this
album feels cold and detached: either the band aren't telling us what they
really mean and hiding behind confusing words or production values (what is
'High Horse' on about?!) or they're going full throttle and punching bells out
of each other and us for listening to it. 'Dig Out Your Soul' is an album
that's always on the verge of feedback and collapse, holding together by fake
politeness where everyone's a little too afraid of giving it their all (again
very 'Let It Be'). Oasis were always a band of brothers - and not just the band
members who were brothers - but here they're 'just' a band, playing their parts
and longing to go home. The only crackle and fire on this record comes when
Liam yells 'To Be Where There's Life' like the Dalai Lama in a punk band, when
the band are in unison on 'Shock Of The Lightning' or 'Falling Down' when the
sea of noise starts levitating of its own accord a la 'Champagne Supernova' or
when Zak Starkey is taking out the pressure that's been dumped on him in a
kick-the-drummer syndrome out on his kit (his solo on 'Lightning' full of pent
up aggression after minutes of being too 'nice' is everything that's great
about Oasis, played at the right time rather than just making noise at random -
it's a shame there aren't more moments like that here). The lyrics are poor by
Oasis standards, vague and wishy-washy without the sheer poetry of their best
nonsense lyrics like 'Supernova' or the direct bluntness of 'Cigarettes and
Alcohol'. They're no longer speaking for anyone on this record except
themselves and they don't seem quite sure yet whether they really want to come
right out and day what they think to each other. Like the record cover the band
have tried to go for surreal and colourful and 'Sgt Peppers' style
collage-style, but come off exaggerating everything, throwing random things
together on the assumption it will work and looking a bit silly Irony of
ironies, 'Dig Out Your Soul' has no soul, instead being a collection of
half-assembled songs that nobody was interested or enthusiastic enough to fit
together with a fine performance. It is, sadly, the weakest Oasis album, as
over-blown as the worst of 'Be Here Now' together with the inconsistency of
albums four to six.
For all that, though,
it's a pretty strong album to have as your weakest moment. 'Lightning' goes
downhill rapidly after it runs out of parlour tricks to show off but for the
opening minute, with new reveal after new reveal, it really is like the Oasis
magic of old. 'Waiting For The Rapture' has the stomp of 'Lord Don't Slow Me Down'
with something to say and Noel beating Liam for once at the best sneer on the
record. 'Falling Down' turns the intensity, sadness and paranoia of Noel's more
recent compositions into the scariest psychedelic song Syd Barrett never
wrote, a world where every opening door
of perception is something to be scared of and back away through, not walk
through. 'To Be Where There's Life' might not be that much of a song but it's
one hell of a riff and may well be Gem's best composition for the band. Finally
'Soldier On' is, unknowingly and unwittingly, the perfect ending, a bunch of
soldiers going home after a war that's left them scared and bloodied and
suffering from shell-shock but still going, marching into the brave unknown. Of
the rest of the songs, nothing here is that bad (except, of course, 'High
Horse'), just uninspired and a little tired. Now I don't agree with critics who
said Oasis left at the right time - or even a decade too late. There's much to
love from the under-rated second half of the band's career and I stand by my
first review that claimed this record would be a fine stepping-stone for the
next thing. The Beatles, after all, still did 'Abbey Road' and even if I don't
think it's much cop other fans seem to: ending on a handshake rather than a
satsuma would have been a much more 'grown-up' way of handling things. But
Oasis have only recently been about growing up - perhaps the biggest
frustration of this album is that the band have found a way to grow up at last
that stayed compatible with what they'd always stood for without recycling it.
A similarly psychedelic concept album about the tensions in the band, but
played by one who means it in an atmosphere of harmony? Now that could have
filled a garden full of soul...
[ ] 'Bag It Up' sounds like the band have got ants in their pants,
with a restless urge to do..something sudden and violent that keeps being held
in check, perhaps Noel sensing that a storm is brewing and wondering whether to
be the first one to lash out. Most of this track is a song with the brakes on, centred
around the same pinging guitar chord whine that gradually turns to feedback,
with the only instrument to find release being Zak's drums, with sudden
rat-a-tat bursts hinting at menace and power. It's an odd place for the record
to start: not since 'F!ckin' In The Bushes' have we started with such an
experiment that takes such licenses with the usual Oasis sound and only on the
middle eight ('Somebody tell me I'm dreaming...') does Liam even sound like
himself. Lyrically, knowing what we know now, this sounds like Noel going back
and forth between whether to end the band right here, right now - nor not. He's
sending a 'telegram' back to his missus with requests for an 'old piano' he needs
to write and promises to meet at the end of a 'runway', which after so long on
the road is as much his 'home' as anywhere now. But he's too tired and worn out
to write a song that 'tells the world I loe them' in true Oasis style and
Noel's not in a loving mood: he's been stuck on tour with 'the monkey man' (almost
certainly his less than flattering description of his brother, sung with such
mocking by Liam that he's almost certainly guessed this), caught between his
terror that the 'freaks' he doesn't recognise anymore and who keep badgering
him for songs ('Giants' was a record full of references like this) and a
competitive spirit that wants 'more more more'. The only relief is a bag of
'heebeejebies' (probably Noel using the 'slang' term for the 'date-rape' drug
GHB, despite having apparently stopped taking narcotics in the last century, although
I'd rather like to think he's talking about a collection of Bee Gees records)
that he wants to share to get 'higher' and forget his current predicament.
However this is a song not about escapism but the nastier side of reality, with
the song sounding like a fight to the death rather than a debate. I'm still not
sure what I think of this track: I admire its power (this is one of the best
band performances on the record), but the sneer seems too often to be aimed at
'us', the fans, something that the 'old' Noel would never do, while the attack
on the rest of the band who put in so much effort making a slightly clumsy song
work, seems a little cheap. Ah well, let's bag it up for later and move on to
the next one.
[ ] 'The Turning' is the song that's grown on me most across seven
years, although it is by Oasis standards so subtle and understated it's all too
easy to overlook. This track too seems written for the fans, with Noel longing
to give them a 'Messiah' to believe him while he goes off searching for a
'dream' and the song's narrator even spends most of the song looking out at the
city trying to make some kind of psychic 'contact' with everybody. However the
chorus is alien and angry again, as Liam screams on his brother's behalf for a
'rag doll' he can easily manipulate and take songs from (a 'Talk Tonight' if
you will). Half vampire, half tribute, this song is confusing and turns from
warm to ice-cold in an instant, with the usual Oasis wall of noise building
blocks given jagged edges so that each of the many guitar parts is duelling
with each other rather than working together. There's a cold aloofness at the
core of this song which is alarming and very different to the usual Oasis sound
and while it's an impressive sound (with Jay Darlington's mellotron the only
thing keeping the performers together at times) it's not an altogether place to
be. Six repeats of the chorus - four of them in a row at the end - is also
pushing patience past breaking point, although the thirty second instrumental
that ends the song (calming Noel down from his 'rapture' back to being a
'normal' human being via the rootsy chords of The Beatles' 'Dear Prudence') is
rather beautiful surrounded by car alarms, broken dreams and a slight sense of
panic.
Noel sings [ ] 'Waiting For The Rapture', a sign that he's either very close to
a song or is singing a genre that Liam wouldn't normally do. Actually this long
sneer is very much in Liam's song and Noel revealed later this was an early
love song for wife Sara and how she 'saved' him from a life of repetitive
cruelty. However this is no 'Wonderwall' or 'The Girl In The Dirty Shirt',
Noel's last paeans to love back in his Meg Matthews days. This love isn't cute,
or romantic, or pretty, or innocent: it's heavy, the way that John Lennon once
claimed his love with Yoko Ono to be (on 'Abbey Road', the album that keeps
cropping up on this review). Noel starts the first verse still waiting for his
picture-book idea of love and almost misses what's happening when she 'reaches
out her hand' before it hits him like a smackeroo blerdy (thanks Small Faces):
love isn't cute, it's intense. The closest thing Noel has ever felt is the
gnawing clanging klaxon going off in his brain whenever he writes a song - and
he doesn't need to write her because she's right there in front of him, talking
about 'the revolution in her head' (another cute Beatles reference via Ian
MacDonald's superb book on the band, one that features a Noel Gallagher quote
on the back page on my old copy)while putting him in a 'trance'. Alas this
promising idea, based around Noel's favourite 4/4 stomp pattern, never really
goes anywhere: we end with the pair's meeting and simply go round the song
again, while Noel gets a chance to try out his falsetto again (to rather more
irritating effect than 'Idle'). What's very nearly a
solo-performance-with-drums is so full of bass distortion it's quite hard even
for hardened Oasis fans like me to listen to, like the backing track to 'I Am
The Walrus' as played during a party celebrating the end of the world. Heard
isolated, it always sounds better than I remember it - though heard after two
very similar tracks in a row it rather loses something on the album.
Thankfully the
screaming feedback of [ ] 'The Shock Of The Lightning'
pulls all these elements together, with a driving rocker that features much
more of a band sound without losing the stomp or surreal quality. The obvious
single from the album, it's the sound of a trapped man working out whether he
wants to escape or not. 'I feel cold - but I'm back in the fire' and 'I'm back
on the streets - but my head is flying' suggests that Noel really really didn't
want to knuckle down to writing this album, too wrapped up is he in dreams of
his new family and too tired is he of being tied to his old one. The song makes
good use of these conflicting feelings, using that special ability Oasis have
to make a song sound as if its levitating, by having so many different parts
playing 'against' each other at different speeds, while the lyrics too try and
urge patience ('All in good time'), enjoy the moment ('the shock of the
lightning' is surely the moment of inspiration, not unlike the moment of 'the
rapture' or 'The Turning'), celebrate past successes ('Love is a time machine,
up on the silver screen') and sigh at recent failures and broken dreams ('I'm
all over my heart's desire'). A classic Oasis riff, churning but in a better
and more musical way than the past three songs, does a good job at holding this
song together like an elastic band, turning the song round so we get to glimpse
all of Noel's mixed feelings one by one. But sadly even this promising song
seems to run out of ideas midway through. Like many songs across this album, it
peaks too soon and the second half is all repetition bar that majestic drum
break from Zak, the only thing here that breaks the monotony and finds release
(Noel was rather proud at getting a drum solo onto a single - he'd been trying
for years but they'd never fitted before, so at least that's one dream he
hadn't given up on!) The shock of the lightning is enough to revive the
beginning of the song, but not enough to fully restore the patient.
It takes Liam to slow
the album down, but arguably [ ] 'I'm Outta Time' slows
the album just that little bit too much. The record's second single, it became
the biggest flop of Oasis' career at the time (though a chart high of #12 in
the UK still ain't bad for a song everyone had already bought on the album
already) and seemed to split reviewers and fans the most. My take is that
there's a great song in here somewhere: the chord progression is pretty (Liam
had and has a real flair for these sort of things, impressive given that he's
not really much of a 'musician'), the words are a powerful reflection on saying
goodbye to something important (almost certainly the band) and his lead vocal a
clever mix of innocence and sneer. But the song is sadly just that bit slow and
that bit over-polished (clever as having Lennon say 'goodbye' from the grave
might be, it sounds terribly out of place stuck at the end of a long fadeout
and mixed so low we can't really hear it) to work as well as it should. The lyrics,
though, are worth persevering with and sound much prouder of what Oasis
achieved and what the fans must feel than anything Noel wrote (this will
continue across Beady Eye's work more than Noel's, with Andy especially picking
up on this idea too).Liam's been listening to a song 'that reminds me of when
we were young' - is it an early Oasis hit heard when flicking channels? Or a
Beatles/Stone Roses/Sex Pistols/Slade favourite on some TOTP/Sounds Of The Sixties-Seventies
compilation? Liam tells us that he's at 'sea' but what he seems to really mean
is that he's withdrawn from the band as far away as possible to have some alone
thinking time, aware that his brother is no longer happy and wondering whether
to 'let him go because in my heart you'd grow'. For all his image as the
troublemaker in the band, it's the first of many Liam songs offering an olive
branch to his brother, offering apologies and words of comfort he would never
dare make in person. He even debates what his brother would do if they were no
longer financially tied at the hip: 'If I'm to fall would you be there to
applaud?' he wonders (it's worth mentioning that the pair got on as well as any
siblings five years apart do in their childhood - the rows only started when
they shared a band and Liam seems to be wondering if things will go back to
where they were if they don't live in each other's pockets all the time). The
use of Lennon at the end seems to be hinting that life is too short for fussing
and fighting, my brother - but Liam also knows that his brother means it this
time and is willing to let him go. A very powerful and moving song, sadly it's
rather thrown away by a performance that tries too hard to be an epic ballad
and which has such a slow tempo it all falls rather flat. Though I've never
heard it, I'm willing to bet the demo of this song was a killer, though, full
of all the passion that evaporated in the studio.
I'm willing to bet,
too, than even the demo of [ ] 'Get Off Your High Horse, Lady' was a dog. Noel can't really do
sarcasm the way his brother can and singing through an electronically enhanced
megaphone while ripping off the tune to 'Hi-Heeled Sneakers' is not the way to
go. Noel has clearly been stung by somebody snooty - though it would make sense
in the context of this album of coded messages and warfare if it was Liam, that
doesn't quite ring true: he's not the 'snooty' type. Noel doesn't really
explain either, mis-directing us to his favourite meteorological metaphors with
tales of a 'fire in the sky' and a 'rain coming down'. Such apocalyptic imagery
may have seemed shocking on past Oasis albums, but here sound rather trite,
while the boom-chikka drum pattern clearly here to resemble a horse in motion
is a nice idea that gets trying way before the end. This song isn't all bad -
the 'wayyyy dowwwwwn' mournful chorus line is rather effective, while the
layers of guitar effects are rather good too. But like many songs on this
record its unfinished and unclear, Noel never adding anything except repetition
and this song's surreal wide brushstrokes sound very out of place and hollow on
an album made in graphic detail and hard monochrome. If ever an Oasis song was
going to put me on my high horse it's this plagiarised, unfinished, badly
performed monstrosity. To think that we could have had the glorious 'Record
Machine' on this album instead...
The album's true
classic and lasting achievement is Noel's last song on an Oasis album and the
band's final single [ ] 'Falling Down'. After
years of hinting at melancholia and depression, Noel unleashes hell on a track
that could easily be read as a suicide note ('Time to kiss the world
goodbye...') If that seems like a rather un-Oasis thing to be writing, then so
is the song: Noel is trapped, caught between a rock (well a gritty guitar) and
a hard place (signified by the saddest mellotron ever), 'lost and found' all at
the same time as his heart takes him to a new place while being hit by memories
of the old. Uncharacteristically he even reaches out to God, so much more
humbly than on their last conversation on 'D'Yer Know What I Mean?' and asks
for help 'but to no avail', turning on him too with a curtly dismissive 'If you
can't help me then please don't waste my time!' The hint is that it's not just
Oasis Noel is saying goodbye too: he name-checks the 'wheel that breaks a
butterfly?' speech that everyone assumed was an Edgar Burroughs reference but
is more likely the newspaper headline of the Telegraph article written when
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were given ridiculous sentences for trumped up
drugs charges. In this context Noel is trying to 'catch' the wheel - the cogs
of industry that destroy artistic freedom without even noticing - and Noel
finds himself blinded by the sun that once brought him everything - his usual metaphor
for his muse or inspiration. Suddenly everything is turning on him: his new
songs are so intense they're hurting him, while the world is changing so fast
he's being left behind. Across the rest of the album Noel sounds defiant or
angry, but here he sounds terrified: 'You can't leave me' he seems to be4
saying 'this is all that I've ever known'. No wonder the track is titled
'Falling Down' - though the line actually refers to the hard times falling
round him like rain, he sounds as if he's falling too, toppling from his perch as
generation spokesperson in a similar to song to close buddy Paul Weller's
'Porcelain Gods'. The band performance on this track is majestic, with Jay
Darlington again the standout on a guest mellotron part that perfectly captures
the feeling of feisty helplessness, while Noel's slightly detached vocal is a
thing of beauty and the last great Oasis wall of noise features him, Gem and
Andy alternating solos, hammered into place by more superb drumming from Zak.
For all that, the demo of this song is still stronger than the recording,
clearly made in the 'heat' of inspiration and capturing Noel's surprise at what
he's written that much more strongly. Sensibly the band included it on the CD
single as a bonus track. The album's one great triumph without a 'but...' added
at the end.
I'm also rather fond of
[ ] 'To Be Where There's Life', a noisy psychedelic
song by Gem that no one else seems to like. Based around the mother of all bass
riffs, superbly played by Andy, it's a thick and heavy song that's
claustrophobic and menacing, perfect for Liam to strut his stuff as if nothing
has changed. The tensions on the 'Fears don't try me, tears don't cry me'
middle eight (which sounds daft when written down, but electrifying on the
album) as vocalist and band head in separate directions in a massive tug-of-war
game, are the single most memorable moment on the album. The most intense and
passion-filled song on the album, this more or less sets the tone for the more
emotional postmodernist rockers that Beady Eye will go on to write ('We gotta
move - it's what we do!'), most likely without Noel playing guitar on the
track. He does get a credit for 'toy sitar' played simultaneously with Andy's tamboura,
which gives the song a nice trippy feel that half-works (it doesn't distract
from the song, but it would have worked equally well without the extra
decoration). Liam clearly loves having a song he can get his teeth into and has
rarely sounded better, pulling the band along through sheer force of
personality at times just like the old days. So is the final lyric: this music,
this band, this power can do anything: it can show their audience the way,
break down 'locked doors', explore 'secret floors', ignore 'signs': everything
'ordinary' people in the 1990s generation can't normally do, except in tandem
with the ordinary's people's greatest band. A tribute to the sheer power and
oomph Oasis brought to their early recordings, this would have made an even
better finale to the record than 'Soldier On', a final moment of glory in the
spotlight and the last time the band get to sound like rock and roll stars,
ending in an explosion of colour and noise the way all good Oasis songs should.
How the hell did the critics not 'get' this song (my 2008 self included, if I'm
honest).
I'm less keen on Liam's
one-note [ ] 'Ain't Got Nothin', which is a re-make of
his 'Don't Believe The Truth' song 'Meaning Of Soul' without a similar amount
of ideas. A rocker that contains more venom than a snakebite, it sounds as if
it was modelled on The Who's 'Dr Jimmy', taken from the point in 'Quadrophenia'
when the main character has got fed up of philosophising and turns nasty as the
drugs wear off. Sounding as if it was written and recorded in the heat of the
battle, it's right in someone's face - probably Noel's - as it demands 'the
truth' and 'to let me out of this groove!' The groove is an apt metaphor as
this song is stuck, the simplest rock and roll moment on the album boxed in by
some slightly lesser drums from Zak as Liam complains of 'not feeling real' and
wondering if it's a 'crime'. Comparing himself to an innocent 'out on bail' giving
the system something to lock him up for, the song gets manic quickly as the band
push way past the logical limit (with somebody - Noel? - screaming to
themselves in-audibly in the background of the instrumental break) and Liam
effectively hands his notice in right here and now. It's clearly a key song for
Oasis, being even more graphic and dramatic than 'Bag It Up', laced through
with more than a little of the contempt of Lennon's 'primal scream' debut
album, taking things down to basics in a search for 'the truth'. However it's a
tough song to listen to and there are far better and more disciplined Oasis
rockers out there.
Andy's [ ] 'The Nature Of Reality' is also a bit of a disappointment: it starts
with some scene-setting feedback that suggests something along the lines of the
Jefferson Airplane, but ends up a slow-burning strutting rocker more like
AC/DC. The guitar riff and booming bass drum, make for an uneasy listening
experience and really don't suit the philosophical lyrics. Andy revealed after
the album came out that he had just got divorced (a fact he largely kept quiet
at the time) and wrote this song after deciding that he felt no emotion at all
after breaking his marriage vows despite being brought up a strict Catholic. Figuring
that there had to be more to life than there seemed on the surface, he plays
with Buddhist concepts instead, figuring that there is no such thing as
'reality' - we all live in different worlds 'in our
mi-eee-ii-eee-iiii-eeee-iiiiiinds' (the closest Liam comes to repeating his
famous 'sunnsheeeeiiinnneee' phrase across this album). In this world, which
sounds like another hazy drug trip, God and the devil exist, but only as
people, with no real effect on the world - its us mortals who have the power to
change our lives. Coming across as more like something the band's old rivals
Kular Shaker or Cornershop would do than the usually more straightforward Oasis
('Brimful Of Asha' is a 9-0s take on psychedelia if ever there was one), it's
nice to hear the band still trying to stretch their sound this late on in the
game and Beady Eye will benefit from the rush of sequels offered by Andy across
the next few years. However, it's not an experiment that's altogether
successful: like many of this album's songs it sounds unfinished, plodding on
the verse, soaring on the chorus and....going back to plodding again, just as
you think you've found the 'answer'. Nice guitar solos though and the massed
choir of Liams all mocking each other over the epic ending is quite a sound to
behold. In this reality I'm suddenly developing a headache.
And so it ends. Fifteen
years of breaking down barriers, uniting the nations' working class youth with
anthemic choruses and promising better days have ended up in [ ] 'Soldier On', a Liam song
that features him lying even to himself. Sounding as if the weight of the world
is on his back and pressing him down, Liam wearily struggles on through one
last simple rocker that sounds as if its going round in circles - a complete
180 degree turn from the anything-goes exuberance of 'Rock and Roll Star' or
'Supersonic; where this journey first began (depending whether you count the
first single or the first album as the 'true' start of the journey). Once
again, Liam is delivering mixed messages: 'Don't be long' he warns the others
before vowing to 'soldier on', while telling his brother that it doesn't matter
whose 'right' or whose 'wrong', the journey is over all the same. A surprise
snatch of Auld Lang Syne on the bagpipes makes you wonder whether the family
unit is uniting after all in a Gallagher tartan, but the bagpipes were designed
for use in battle and that's how they sound here, counting the cost and trying
to unite a disparate band of people lost inside a haze of their own making
(brilliantly conjured up out of all the electronic trickery). Liam's last
message for the world: 'Come the morning I'll be gone' followed by one last
great 'na na na' chorus - this time sounding a million miles away from the joy
of 'Around The World' or the slightly sadder ones of 'Keep The Dream Alive' or
'I'm Outta Time'. This isn't a time for hope or hugs, what that burst of
nonsense joy usually signified (probably 'nicked' from The Beatles' 'Hey Jude'
where it's one of the most uplifting sounds in music): this is a world of
casualties where nobody can be saved and everything the narrator once knew was
gone. Rather than admit it, he blindly keeps struggling forward, sure that a
sniper's bullet will get him too as he 'soldiers on' into a massacre. The
bullet catches him, too, given the sudden ear-catching wave of noise that
greets the song's final moments, the band fading away into the distance as
they're replaced by a host of hideous electronic noises (the band's comments on
the 'hole'; they're leaving behind in music perhaps? In truth there'd mainly
been electronic noises like this since the end of the band's heyday in 1997 -
isn't it about time to give another sound a go for a bit?) Though again like
almost all the album I'd trade in three minutes of repetition for an extra
verse anyday, this is another powerful song treated with just the right amount
of detachment thanks to a band performance that's eerie and chilling, Noel's
sloppy drumming the sound of a band of former comrades who were once so close
now struggling to keep pace with each other. It's a powerful goodbye, even back
in the days when it wasn't yet an 'official' goodbye and remains one of the
most moving moments of any Oasis album.
Overall, then, 'Dig Out
Your Soul' isn't one of those 'farewell' triumphs the way that The Moody Blues'
'Seventh Sojourn' or The Searchers' 'Take Me For What I'm Worth' or 10cc's 'Windows
In The Jungle' are. But nor is it an unmitigated disaster the way that The
Who's farewells are (take your pick from 'It's Hard' and reunion album 'Endless
Wire') or Lindisfarne's 'Dingly Dell' is often said to be. It is, instead, a
mixed farewell album akin to Pink Floyd's 'The Division Bell' or Simon and
Garfunkel's 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' or, yes, it's close cousin 'Let It Be'
are: a step down from the band's peak but without falling down too
spectacularly. Half the songs sound rushed and completed and half of the
performances sound spiky and repetitive, lost in a world of trance and
psychedelic punk that really doesn't suit Oasis in any era, never mind a last
goodbye to their sound. However when the other half of the album gets moving
much of it is truly great: 'Falling Down' 'To Be Where There's Life' and
'Soldier On' really do sit amongst the band's best work and if that's lower
odds per an eleven track album than we've ever had from Oasis before then that
doesn't necessarily make it bad. All of this album is straining at the leash to
do something different and given the alienation and acidness in the room (on
both meanings of the word) it's a wonder that any of the album manages to be as
good as it is, with so little that bad. This is a courageous and at times
fitting ending to a fifteen year journey of ups and downs - it's just a shame
it isn't that little bit better, consistent and more inspired too, an album
made up of too many thunder clouds and not that much shock of the lightning at
all really.
Other Oasis articles from this site you may be interested in reading:
'Definitely Maybe' (1994) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/news-views-and-music-issue-105-oasis.html
'Be Here Now' (1997) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2013/11/oasis-be-here-now-1997-album-review.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.co.uk/2008/10/oasis-dig-out-your-soul-2008_31.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
‘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.co.uk/2008/10/oasis-dig-out-your-soul-2008_31.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
