Imagine if this were Oasis’ debut album. It might at best be considered a cute retro album, high on detail, but failing dismally in the battle between derivativeness and relevance. Because bands can be and probably should be both, see Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, White Stripes, and then pretty much every other band in existence. Inspiration in many ways is all that we all have. There are many who still insist that ‘Definitely Maybe’ failed the same test, but that was a record weighed heavy with enough arrogance, attitude and raw necessity to block out the sun, never mind win over the passions and history that fuelled them. It was an album that felt like it had to be made, and it allowed them to fit the zeitgeist like a glove. ‘Digsy’s Dinner’ excepted, of course.
‘Don’t Believe The Truth’ didn’t need to be made, and though they think it probably did this is only borne out of a desperate desire to justify their existence. It’s a ‘need’ in the local sense. Where they were once arrogant they are now arguably blinkered and ignorant. Victims of their success they’ve lost a foothold the reality that fed the beauty of their early successes. So talk of a blazing return to form is premature. And impossible. So if this were a debut album it would be liked, and then forgotten. The closest it would get to Knebworth would be on their tour bus heading past on the nearby M1 motorway. Or maybe bottom of the bill supporting Robbie Williams there. Arf. But we say all this in order to put the context in context, rather than letting the Brothers Deft and Dim set that themselves with their implausible cover-all-bases pre-release verbosity.
This isn’t a bad record. Taking as our only benchmark their post-‘Morning Glory’ output, it’s a very good record. But then that, like their own hyperbole, presumes everyone else to be irrelevant. What is definitely true is that this is their most consistent release since ‘Morning Glory’. It feels like a full album and not at all like the end result of years of false-starts, scrapped sessions and desperation that we know these recording sessions were. It doesn’t feel like the bloated, unfocused ambitions of one man, it feels like a band effort, and looking at the writing credits it is nearing that. But then if that is the case then there’s no use yearning for a return to the good old days, because that’s a bit like expecting Coldplay to put out a ‘Definitely Maybe’. Oasis Mk Whatever it is now is a completely different being.
Which also means that Noel’s been back to his record collection, dug a bit deeper, and come up with ‘Lyla’ (a Who pastiche), Part of the Queue (The Stranglers’ ‘Golden Brown’ made a bit mundane with Joe Cocker’s idea of epic, but with some reasonably ambitious instrumentation, for Oasis), and ‘Mucky Fingers’ (a reinterpretation of both the Rolling Stones’ ‘Get Off Of My Cloud’ and the Velvet Underground’s ‘Waiting For The Man’, using the word reinterpretation lightly, and featuring a harmonica solo that it’ll be interesting to see if Liam tries to pull off live). This is probably their first album in a while not to be defined by filler, though ‘Keep The Dream Alive’ is a weaker facsimile of the superior, pretty ‘Love Like A Bomb’, and ‘Guess God Thinks I’m Abel’, ‘The Importance of Being Idle’ are forgettable and clumsy with the influences.
Yeah, this’ll do. They should just count themselves lucky that this isn’t their first album and that’s all they need.