Oasis Roll With It For Another Night Of Glory
It may have been the day before Bonfire Night but Oasis certainly delivered some fireworks as they swaggered into the SECC last night.
And although the mouthy Manchester rock gods have been going for 14 years now, they still had the sold-out crowd in the palm of their hands from the opening blast of Rock N Roll Star, a song that was once a statement of intent but is now simply a matter of fact.
The Gallagher brothers didn't let the pace slack early on, with a raucous sing-a-long Lyla, before the classic guitar intro of Cigarettes And Alcohol saw the entire building shake.
Liam was his usual self, casually moving about the stage with a confident, cocky air. He didn't say much, but did find time to direct a sarcastic, foul-mouthed dedication before one number to Lorraine Kelly!
His brother Noel was quiet too, preferring to let the music do the talking.
The one hour and 40-minute set mixed in old classics, new material and a few rarities, with a storming Morning Glory highlighting the drumming prowess of new sticksman Chris Sharrock, while The Masterplan offered a nice change of pace.
Of the material from new album Dig Out Your Soul, the psychedelic tinged To Be Where There's Life fared best, letting Liam's famed full-throated roar shine. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said of Ain't Got Nothin'.
But a superb Wonderwall and Supersonic had plenty of punch, before the encore was highlighted by an acoustic run-through of Don't Look Back In Anger and the inevitable closing cover of I Am The Walrus.
Oasis return to the SECC tonight, but the gig's sold-out.
Source: www.eveningtimes.co.uk
Pictures: Marc Turner
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Oasis, SECC, Glasgow Tue 4 Nov
Is Liam Gallagher informing us of his travel plans, or did he actually give the game away there? ‘We’re gonna be in Glasgow for New Year,’ he seems to say from the stage at one point, only slightly battling against the hubbub from well over ten thousand people in the opened-out hall. What, he and Nicole on a seasonal getaway with the kids, or the actual band themselves in a live context? Liam, as is the way with almost all of his blurted onstage proclamations, doesn’t elaborate.
He does do a lot of dedicating songs to ‘old chicks’ and ‘old geezers’, though. And Lorraine Kelly and her ‘fat arse’, which isn’t very gentlemanly. Few vocalists before Gallagher or since have managed to be quite so repellent and utterly magnetic in the same breath, and it’s his charisma which increasingly carries the band.
Of course, the songs which made Oasis so definitively of their era are Noel’s, but what gave them a sense of unbounded optimism and fearless hope for the future for a brief period between ’94 and ’96 (or until Noel went to Downing Street in ’97, to eke out their glory years optimistically) has long since been reflected back on them. The last decade has seen Oasis, just like Blair’s Labour during its life, drop the ball and stagger ever-more-shakily back to its feet too many times to convince.
Many of their plentiful hits get an airing, but ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, ‘The Masterplan’ and ‘Champagne Supernova’, so fresh and new and epoch-making at the time, have become creaky laments to the days when Dad were still a contender, son. Likewise, the still kinda mighty ‘Supersonic’ and ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’ have stopped being about youthful rebellion and started most adequately soundtracking the lives of ‘old geezers’ who don’t know when to pack up and take the party home.
Classics in years gone by have been almost accidental. ‘Lyla’ is an effectively catchy stadium rocker, while ‘The Importance of Being Idle’ is most acceptable as proof that Noel still has a bit of songwriting range and an ability to break out from the usual ‘shine’ / ‘time’ / ‘line’ back-of-a-fag-packet poetry. While new tracks ‘The Shock of the Lightning’ and ‘Falling Down’ are deservedly the most well-received, the rest of their brand new efforts are greeted with respect and dignified near-silence; two most unOasis-like reactions.
Only one song, in the event, is still truly great, and it’s also the single Oasis song which sounds perfect in context – context, of course, being what this band lost sight of years ago. The track is ‘Slide Away’, and the repeated ‘don’t know / don’t care / all I know is you can take me there’ line at the end perfectly sums up the necessary ‘que sera sera’ mentality of a band who are so of-their-generation that they’re intent on rapidly growing old with it.
Source: www.list.co.uk
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