What’s the Story? (Brotherly Furore?)

Ah, the solo album. The bastard child of the ageing artist. The vanity project marketed at the die-hard fans who couldn’t deal with the terrible truth that their favourite band broke up nearly a decade ago, now reduced to eating the crumbs that fell off the table. “Critics be damned”, they agonise, “this album showcases their raw, untainted, talent and personality”. DENIAL. Desperately, they cling onto the notion that had they had the courage to risk an affair with the capricious mistress of Fame and Fortune, it could’ve been them. Alas. Their only recourse now is to fork out £10 a month to Spotify and Apple Music to support the artist in their cocaine and caviar habits. That or deal with the crushing mediocrity that is life itself.

But what do I know, maybe I’m just bitter that everyone else’s favourite bands (Gorillaz, The Killers, The Strokes, U2) had a new release last year. Yet, the only thing Arctic Monkeys fans got was a disappointing meteorological event sharing a name with the track ‘Brianstorm’.

But look at me dancing around the issue. Dancey, dancey, dancey, la di da. ALRIGHT, LET’S GET TO THE POINT. Are the new albums by the Gallagher brothers good? YES. MAYBE. Are they better than Oasis? NO.

“Liam Gallagher may have as much of way with words as a grizzly bear on ice has a talent for ballet, but I suppose that’s part of his charm.”

What you have to understand is that for any album to be comparable with Oasis, it has to be inventive both lyrically and melodically. Not enough on the lyrical front, like Noel’s Who Built the Moon, and you’re left feeling you’ve wasted time on the ‘artsy fartsy’, like an evening out listening to prog-rock backed Poetry Slam. Not enough on the melodic front, like Liam’s As You Were, and it feels like you’re being fed a stream of half-cooked metaphors-cum-advice until the point you’d like to ram a sharp implement through your own head. (Do not try this at home). Songs like ‘Wonderwall’, for the lack of a better phrase, do wonder simply because they so readily convey the type of middle-class comfort and inarticulacy that culminates in phrases like “...all the road we have to walk are winding”. A banal platitude, sure, but a banal platitude that in the lens of Oasis sounds like genuine life advice.

I am, of course, aware that there may be Oasis fans reading this review right now. And to be completely honest, it’s not all that fair for me to tear apart any emotional attachment anyone has constructed around the phenomenon of Britpop. I should know better; I spent my formative years listening to Nirvana and Janis Joplin trying to dig my way out of the awkward years of schoolboy adolescence. Much of music criticism IS subjective, and I would be lying if I said that I don’t derive as much joy as I do from hating Taylor Swift if I weren’t satisfying myself on the fact that I am attacking the people who didn’t share the same experience growing up as I did. (The bloody wankers never seem to have needed to deal with puberty and the immense self-doubt that came with it.) The truth is, Oasis wrote their own music, and that, by definition, puts them above 70% of pop music today. Liam Gallagher may have as much of way with words as a grizzly bear on ice has a talent for ballet, but I suppose that’s part of his charm. The same can be said of Noel, whose ‘Holy Mountain’ reminds me pleasantly of Franz Ferdinand and their psychedelic pussyfooting in asking a girl on a date. Is it a material for Nobel Prize for Literature? Perhaps not, but it has all the comforts of a Bruce Willis movie. You go to it when you need to turn your brain off.

“It has all the comforts of a Bruce Willis movie. You go to it when you need to turn your brain off.”

Nonetheless, if you’re not a fan and belong the group of people who read reviews to see what’s worth your time, I would say go for Noel’s album. It’s the lesser of two evils: Liam can come off as abrasive, and the stealing of canned phrases from the Beatles does get on your nerve when he does it the Nth time. (It took me 4 weeks to stopped cringing when he unthinkingly parodies Lennon’s ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’). When you get used to it, and let the melody wash over the lyrics, it is pretty pleasant. But before that, the choice of ‘Chinatown’ as a romantic setting just conjures images of damp streets, massage parlours and pick-pockets in Leicester Square. You’d think the brothers would have taken a song-writing course with their all Britpop success by now.