Noel Gallagher, High Flying Birds, Olympia Dublin, Review













4 Stars out of Five

Noel Gallagher had confessed to feeling jittery ahead of the live debut of his High Flying Birds project. Apparently the thought of playing mid-tempo Beatles-esque guitar pop to a room of swooning fans was enough to bring him out in a cold sweat.

Hang on, cynics will mutter, hasn’t he been doing precisely the same thing with Oasis for the past decade and a half? The difference, of course, is that this time it’s Noel Alone. Two years after his relationship with Liam imploded in a firestorm of expletives (and, if rumours are to be believed, airborne guitars), his new ensemble is finally here in the flesh, ready to spread its wings on stage for the first time. Since Liam’s Beady Eye turned out to be all swagger, no songs, the opportunity to prove he was the heart and soul of Oasis all along is within grasp.

Accompanied by a brisk light show and an unfussy four-piece group – he has described High Flying Birds as a collective but, really, it’s a glorified solo vehicle – the nerves Noel had been predicting in interviews were nowhere in evidence. Perhaps the edge was taken off by his new album’s romp to the top of the charts. Either that or the stage fright was buried beneath an avalanche of beetle-browed intensity. Gallagher could have been frowning for England: if they start handing out awards for scowling, he’d best invest in a fresh mantelpiece.

The new record, called simply Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, is a satisfying blend of the surprising and familiar. Occasional experimental flourishes – there are unlikely winks towards Eighties electronica and mid-Nineties indie pop – are offset by Gallagher’s patented spit and sawdust song-writing. Above all, the album is electrified by the sense anything is possible. Noel still isn’t much cop at lyrics ( inevitably he rhymes of “gun” with “sun”) but, for the first time since the late Nineties, you get the impression he is writing for himself rather than a vast expectant fan base.

True to his word, he threw in several Oasis tracks, starting off none too subtly with It’s Good To Be Free and prompting mass scenes of grown men blubbing into their lager during Wonderwall. However, the focus was clearly on the new material. Recreated with extra oomph, Everybody’s on the Run is a stomping ballad which, unlike practically every Oasis torch song ever composed, skirts around treacly Let It Be pastiche.

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
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