STANDING ON THE SHOULDER OF GIANTS

Oasis (album)

I have a surprise for you. Stay tuned. For now, though, let’s carry on as normal and so I present to you Oasis’ fourth LP proper and it’s ten times better than Be Here Now. Hurrah! I hear you cry. That’s not the surprise, because The Birdie Song is ten times better than Be Here Now. There’s a more stripped down feel to the whole thing (is that down to Mark Stent, erstwhile musical helper for the mighty Depeche Mode and, er, the Spice Girls?) and it moves along at a slightly faster pace than anything they’ve done before. All this means that no longer can you play all their albums back to back without being able to tell where one set ends and another begins, so that’s the end of that particular party game. However, it’s not all sweetness and light. In fact, very little of it is. It’s dull and plodding at times (but only for the majority of the album) and is genuinely puzzling on the whole. I Can See A Liar is a particularly heinous effort – if you remember excessively-mulleted eighties stadium rock at its very worst you already know this one. Noel Gallagher continues to prove he’s a better singer than Liam, although he’s ever-so-slightly vocoded on Where Did It All Go Wrong? which means the whole thing sounds wrong – either don’t do it (preferred) or go all the way like a certain Europop band. Little James is arranged nicely, but it’s Liam’s first ever song and it shows big style as he manages to rhyme plasticine and trampoline and suggests to his baby son "Everyone will soon be gone". Keep thinking those happy thoughts, won’t you? Mind you, Noel doesn’t exactly come across as a lyrical wizard at times, either. The first line in Gas Panic! is "What tongueless ghost of sin crept through my curtains?" Good work, Noel. But now, I give you the surprise. Gas Panic! is fantastic. I’m not kidding, it’s the greatest thing Oasis’ve ever done and coming from me, that’s one hell of an accolade. It’s dark, moody, edgy and if it’s not a future single then there’s no justice in the world. Taking the album as a whole though, it has to be said they’re getting there, but there’s so much still to be done.