Review

Oasis, it’s a name that raises either hackles or goosebumps. When the Gallagher brothers swaggered out of Manchester in the early Nineties, ready made rock stars with Beatles haircuts and bile-flecked lips, they energised a staid British music scene. Theirs was music without pretension; they didn’t try and win us over with innovation. In truth, they wouldn’t have known how to. Instead they relied on brute but irresistible charm, their first two albums Definitely Maybe and (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? clobbering us over the head with an artillery of hook-heavy choruses.

They were noble savages, crafting primitive, thrilling rock ‘n’ roll. These records struck an everyman chord and defined the mid-Nineties Brit-rock zeitgeist. It’s all too easy now to dismiss their appeal, to wrinkle our noses in disgust at those beery hymns and the awing scale of their appeal. But Oasis were, and still are, proper rock stars, a band who ascended to the heights on the back of some truly Olympian songs and sheer soaring charisma. Though they have endured as a potent live force their later recorded material has paled in comparison to those first two albums. Indeed, in recent years, their interviews have often proven more entertaining than their music.

Dig Out Your Soul is the latest attempt to rekindle the heat of previous glories and an admirable effort it is too, almost making good on the promise of a rebirth that was hinted at by Don’t Believe The Truth. Their seventh studio album in total, Dig Out Your Soul is the product of perhaps the most harmonious recording experience the band have ever enjoyed, Liam Gallagher having described it as “the easiest record we’ve ever made”. What’s more, despite reports of their pursuing a Krautrock-inspired new direction, this is in every respect a classic Oasis album. Winning riffs and bombastic, stomp-along choruses are much in evidence, as is the enduring fixation with The Beatles, Small Faces, Kinks and others of their ilk. It is the psychedelia-tinged sounds of the Sixties that take precedence here.

The first two-thirds of the album, weighted as they are with the Noel-penned numbers, are the more convincing. ‘Bag It Up’ is a brisk slice of glam-rock whimsy, Liam growling some surreal/nonsensical lyrics: “the freaks are rising up through the floor”. It’s a serviceable opener, the belligerent strut of the rhythm section providing cut and thrust. Much better is ‘The Turning’, a song which Noel has described as “the Roses doing the Stooges”. It’s heavy, guitars wielded like a lead pipe to the back of the skull. The chorus oozes across the listener’s imagination on the back of Liam’s cryptic but brilliantly menacing exhortation to “shake your reptile, baby”. What does he mean? Who knows, but it sounds obscene and glorious.

‘Waiting For The Rapture’, meanwhile, comes across like the acid-addled offspring of The Doors and The Rolling Stones. With vocals providing by Gallagher the elder, this is a song carved from the quarry of classic rock, the riffs and rhythms big and bombastic. Somewhat more fleet-footed is the single ‘Shock Of The Lightning’. It’s brash and affirmative, carried on the back of fiercely surging percussion and muddy swathes of guitar. So far, so good, but then the opening quartet of tracks are all crafted by Noel. ‘I’m Outta Time’ is the first offering borne of the much maligned songwriting talents of the younger sibling. Simple and engaging, this melodic ballad is more than good, though the influence of a certain John Lennon is all too transparent. Indeed the sainted Beatle even makes a spectral spoken word cameo.

Relatively speaking, the most outré moment is ‘(Get Off Your) High Horse Lady’. A cavalcade of found sounds, contorted vocal and psychedelic sentiments creates a lulling, hypnotic ambience. The final of Noel’s contributions, ‘Falling Down’ follows psych-pop tramlines before disembarking at a deceptively overwhelming chorus. From here on, however, Noel passes the baton to his bandmates and it’s a lacklustre final third.

Gem Archer’s ‘To Be Where There’s Life’ quickly sounds tired; a lumpen, psychedelic quagmire. Our kid’s ‘Ain’t Got Nothing’ is full of sound and fury but signifies little to, ahem, nothing. However, Andy Bell takes the songwriting wooden spoon for ‘The Nature Of Reality’. It’s a blundering, retro-riffed slice of quasi-mystical claptrap masquerading as something profound. Dig Out Your Soul limps to a close with Liam’s ‘Soldier On’, a gutsy stomper but really little better than something Ocean Colour Scene might conjure up.

In truth, Oasis never will be, and never were, the future of rock ‘n’ roll, but they once succeeded in capturing a moment and as such occupy an exalted position in many people’s past. Despite it’s shortcomings, Dig Out Your Soul succeeds in reminding us why. Francis Jones

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

DOWNLOAD: ‘THE TURNING’, ‘I’M OUTTA TIME’, ‘FALLING DOWN’.
FOR FANS OF: THE WHO, PINK FLOYD, THE BEATLES.

Posted on: 27th January 2010

---