Album Of The Week: Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul

4/5

Liam Gallagher claims this is the easiest album Oasis have ever made. It could also be the most adventurous. But how would you know? Under the leadership of Liam’s big brother Noel, they have never been about adventure.

With their impassive stares, seasoned arrogance, increasingly domineering stadium sound and long-standing knack for window shopping at the museum of rock, Oasis are all about maintaining their brand.

Realising his limits as a songwriter – he writes a good song but it’s usually only the one song – Noel’s created an album that emphasises the groove or musical welly side of his band. There’s also a song apiece from Gem Archer and Andy Bell, confirming them as fully-integrated Oasis members.

Liam’s whine is every bit the equal to the band’s thermonuclear charge on the opening Bag It Up. And he does some lovely silky falsetto at the end of The Turning.

On Waiting For The Rapture, Noel plays Manchester Street Preacher, which is not bad but no match for little brother’s Lennon/Lydon sneer. And on his own I’m Outta Time, Liam shocks – revealing he’s even soppier than his big brother with the song including a sample from John Lennon’s final radio interview. Isn’t there a law against such flagrant graverobbing? Perhaps not.

Maybe it’s a mistake to listen too closely to the words, though. Falling Down is an excellently charged piece of Oasis music – imaginatively utilising echoey backing vocals, a piano breakdown and wired synthetic strings.

But the lyrics leave a lot to be desired. “Catch the wheels and break the butterfly” reworks an image from a famous 1967 newspaper editorial about a notorious Rolling Stones drug bust.
Perhaps Noel has decided that in the modern era, noncommittal rock lyrics make good brand-protecting business sense.

He must be aware as anyone of the dangers of speaking out of turn and upsetting audiences and the – always potentially lucrative – US market.

It’s seemingly left to Andy Bell to offer philosophical pause for thought with The Nature Of Reality. But relax folks, he’s a student of the Noel Gallagher school of songwriting – say nothing but rattle the big dustbin of rock history.

Well, they are at least as well equipped as anyone to do it.

Source: www.mirror.co.uk