Fan Review: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds In Brussels

"You're quite lively for a Belgian crowd aren't you?"

Due to me leaving too late in a combination with a lot of traffic jams, I totally missed the opening act and only arrived about 10 minutes before the High Flying Birds were ready to take off! Nevertheless, using our female forces, we managed to wrestle ourselves halfway through the venue, to a good spot about in the middle with, most importantly, a good view on our Noel.

When the AA remix of IIHAG started, a few people were singing along already, so it promised to be a good gig!

Opening with It's Good To Be Free, followed by Mucky Fingers, as usual. It left a lot of people in doubt though: 'Was that an Oasis song? It's not on the album! Is it a new song?' Pretty funny, although I still think he should open with something else!

Then Everybody's On The Run. A lot of people singing along! And even in Dream on, people were shouting along through the whole venue! You could already see on Noel's face that he was quite surprised about the reception he was getting!

If I Had A Gun started of amazing. A lot of people singing along again! This could really be the new 'Wonderwall' if he would play it acoustically!

In between songs Noel mentioned that we were "quite lively for a Belgian crowd" and that he "played here with Oasis before, but it never was like this". He seemed genuinely impressed with us, which only made us even louder of course!

The Good Rebel was better live, but I still find the song a bit bland. Not many people knew what it was either, and the people next to me were trying to assure me the song was called 'Black Rain'

The Death of You And Me, being a single, of course got a great reception. Not many people singing along though. Then Freaky Teeth! What a tune that is! People were jelling the title before he started and his reply was “I’m going to play it, but not because you asked it. I was going to play it anyway, so shut up.”

Then the acoustic bit. Wonderwall was amazing! A lot of confused people in the beginning, since it was the Ryan Adams version of couse, but after the first few lines they were over it and singing their hearts out! Same for Supersonic! One of the best Supersonics as of yet in my opinion! Great quality video here BTW!

A lot of of people singing along with Record Machine as well, which surprised me again! It seemed like the whole venue had listed to the album a million times before coming to the gig!

What A Life wasn't nearly as good as on the record, and the first time that Noels voice didn't hold up very well (in the high parts). It has been a single but hasn't been played much over here, so it was about the first song (bar the two opening songs) that didn't get great reaction. It stayed that way for Talk Tonight and Soldier Boys And Jesus Freaks.

The banter was again Noel picking on some people on the first rows. “Come to Columbia? Why? You’re here, I’m here, fuck the rest of them!” and “You want a picture? With me? No”

The next song was announced as "This is a song for all the ladies". Broken Arrow! A favourite of mine! Then Half the World Away, a lot of singing (or shouting) along again!

Closing the set was of course Stranded On The Wrong Beach. Starts of very psychedelic. Love it! Most of the people didn't really seem to know it though, but it was a good closer!

Then the encore. Needles to say that was amazing! Little By Little blew the roof off! Importance of being Idle, was never the biggest fan of this song, but it was good! And then, Don't Look Back In Anger'! The whole venue had it's hands in their air and was singing their lungs out! Amazing! Noel stepped back during the chorus and watched us singing our hearts out with a big smile appearing on his face (1.50)! You could clearly see he enjoyed it as well!

What a gig! You could clearly see the whole band enjoyed it very much! The bass player looked pretty stoned by the way and had this stupid smile on his face for pretty much the whole gig! Also, the guitarist got boo'ed again after introducing him as being from the USA

Also remember him looking and smiling at Noel at some point when we were all singing along. Great gig!

Videos from the gig can be found below thanks to Eveline for the review and Brieuc for the videos.