Oasis Best Album Since Morning Glory. Honest!
By
Stop Crying Your Heart Out
on
October 01, 2008
Stage attacks, snide comments directed at contemporaries and wild comparisons to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Yes, it can mean only one thing: Oasis are releasing a new studio album.
Entitled Dig Out Your Soul, the Brit pop survivors’ eagerly anticipated seventh album sees band leader Noel Gallagher sharing songwriting duties with three of the eleven tracks penned by his cocksure brother Liam and one each by guitarist Gem Archer and bassist Andy Bell.
Noel revealed to BBC 6 Music: “Funnily enough, we all write separately, but for some reason all the songs sound like they’ve got a common thread. We’ve been focusing round the grooves more this time, the last album was quite ‘songy’, if that makes any sense, I don’t know. But it was quite ‘songy’: ‘The Importance of Being Idle’, ‘Let There Be Love’ – it was quite a British, retro, 60s sounding album. This is kinda focusing round the grooves more.”
They say:
Antiquiet: “The album title's an ironic suggestion, as we wonder how much digging it would take Oasis to get back to 1997, where they seem to have left theirs.”
Gigwise: “This is an album that truly takes hold of all expectations and desires and delivers a punch that will not only shake your bones – but any one who manages to stand in a near radius of you.”
The Quietus: “By and large, Dig Out Your Soul is a refreshing listen, both the sound of Oasis rediscovering some of the spirit that made them great, and attempting – finally – something different.”
We say:
You know the routine by now: Oasis release a new album, early reviews hype it to the heavens and call it the Gallagher brothers’ “best album since Definitely Maybe” and then a backlash ensues when said reviewers are proven to have been blowing hot air out of their free ticket and promo bribed backsides.
So let’s cut to the chase: is Dig Out Your Soul really the best thing the band have done since their swaggering, era defining debut long player? Of course not. But how about since their polished anthemic pop opus (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? Definitely – and there’s no maybe about it.
This a real return to form (there’s another Oasis cliché for you to chew on) in which the band seem to have hit a rich songwriting vein.
Opener ‘Bag it Up’, a driving rocker complete with Pink Floyd acid paranoia (“Someone tell me I’m dreaming/ The freaks are rising up through the floor”), could be the new ‘Columbia’.
‘The Turning’, meanwhile, pays homage to the Beatles’ ‘Dear Prudence’ and finds Liam in fine sneering form, while ‘Waiting for the Rapture’, which is the first of three Noel sung tracks, is a bluesy foot stomper borrowing heavily from the Doors’ ‘Five to One’ and dripping with effortless cool.
Even first single ‘The Shock of the Lightning’ impresses here, no longer weighed down by first out of the gate expectations.
However, it is the second half of Dig Out Your Soul that proves the most interesting and rewarding. Oasis open themselves up to a wider range of influences and where rhythm is favoured over melody, most notably on the intricately woven and emotionally dark ‘Falling Down’, which has shades of Noel’s drone rock output with the Chemical Brothers. So much so, in fact, that Chemical Tom and Chemical Ed have even remixed the track and Gem’s hypnotic, sitar soaked ‘To Be Where There’s Life’ which sounds like the Stone Roses traversing the Indian subcontinent on some kind of spiritual quest.
Only Liam’s soppy John Lennon tribute ballad ‘I’m Outta Time’ drops the ball on an album sure to delight their army of fans and perhaps even attract a few new ones.
Like this? Try these:
The Beatles – The Beatles (The White Album)
The Stone Roses – Second Coming
The White Stripes – Elephant
RELEASED
6th Oct ‘08
LABEL
Big Brother
Source: www.mansized.co.uk