Monkey and Beatles

In the pre-Winehouse era, the British exported their music, not their dirty laundry, which is why it's possible for Americans to recall the mid-'90s moment when Oasis and Blur jostled for the title of rock's best band in complete ignorance of the fact that the groups genuinely loathed each other. The divisive issues were class and ambition: Oasis' Noel and Liam Gallagher boasted that they had neither, while the members of Blur were posh college kids who briefly went by the band name Seymour, after J.D. Salinger's suicidal genius. Blur's music had oblique melodies and omnivorous influences; Oasis ripped off as many Beatles tunes as it could get away with. On one of the many occasions when Blur's lead singer, Damon Albarn, mocked the musical sophistication of his rivals, Noel Gallagher replied that he wished Albarn would "catch AIDS and die." It was, in its horrible way, an excellent feud.

A decade and change later, Blur has broken up. But Albarn stayed on his artistic trajectory and has assumed the throne, vacant since David Bowie's prime, of popular music's avant-gardist in chief. In the past few years, he's launched a cartoon hip-hop band (Gorillaz), an Afro-pop album (Mali Music) and a side project with a member of the Clash. All were slightly ridiculous (hip-hop, world music, supergroup--the hubristic rock star's triple crown) but well received, yet none can quite prepare you for Albarn's latest: Journey to the West, a "circus opera" based on a Ming-dynasty novel, with lyrics in Mandarin by Chinese actor Chen Shi-zheng. The protagonist is the wildly self-confident Monkey, who irritates his peers with his certainty that he is far more gifted than they are and deserving of immortal acclaim. He doesn't go by the nickname Damon, but it's a fair question.

Journey was performed multiple times over the past year to raves, but listening to the score out of context is a little like hearing gossip about people you don't know: some things simply don't register. Portions of the album, however, are breathtaking. The instruments--from synthesizers and the thereminesque Ondes Martenot to harps and an acrylic doodad of Albarn's co-invention that replicates the sound of car horns on busy Chinese roads--are lavish, but the exoticism is somehow kept in check. Typical of Albarn's various cultural adventures, he doesn't attempt to pass as a local; the details and pentatonic scale may come from Chinese folk music, but the playful melodies are rooted in pop. The fluttering female voices on "Heavenly Peach Banquet" resolve as the la-la-la-la-las from Minnie Ripperton's "Lovin' You." "Iron Rod" sounds like R2-D2 rapping on a dance floor. "The Living Sea" is a ballad of such delicacy that it feels like a love song in any language. The music does a fair job of telling Monkey's story, but that's far less interesting than the ambition on display and the effortless integration of different traditions.

Oasis' seventh album, Dig Out Your Soul, also incorporates different traditions: John Lennon's and Paul McCartney's. There are plenty of worse musicians to rob, and on several tracks Oasis proves that it still has a gift for towering, arena-friendly tunes. "I'm Outta Time" is rock balladry at its shameless best--with an emotional guitar lead and a sweeping, sing-along chorus: "If I am to go/ In my heart you grow." Good luck resisting it, even if there is a needlessly appended sample from Lennon's final radio interview. "Ain't Got Nothin'" takes the band out of its midtempo sweet spot with an erratic snare drum that refuses to settle into a predictable rhythm. It's like "Helter Skelter" but faster.

Much of Dig Out Your Soul is pretty good, but none of it is particularly challenging--to the listener or its creators. Oasis too has stayed on its trajectory. Noel Gallagher recently told an interviewer that "it's a working-class thing ... I'm not an experimenter." Even if you overlook this patronizing view of the working class, the limiting of artistic horizons as a virtue is worrisome. For all the Beatles envy, it's the Rolling Stones whom Oasis has come to resemble most--not in its music but in its aversion to acknowledging anything but its own success.

Source: www.time.com