I had a strange experience last night. I listened to the new Liam Gallagher album and quite enjoyed it.
Now this is a statement that needs some context and explanation. I haven't really enjoyed any music featuring Liam Gallagher for many, many years. That goes for his brother Noel too. Ot for that matter Oasis, the band that both Liam and Noel owe pretty much everything to.I'd heard enough of them to be frank by about 1999.
But waking from my sofa in the middle of the night feeling slightly better, following a ghastly three day dose of flu that I honestly felt at points might actually finish me off, I thought 'what the hell!'. I can do it. I can listen to the new Liam Gallagher record.
Liam has experienced the oddest comercial and creative turnaround over the past few years. Strangely, he has managed to turn the tables on Noel. That wasn't something anybody anticipated frankly. Noel, regardless of what you ever thought about Oasis after all, was clearly the talent. He wrote and crafted the songs. Played the guitar. Wrote the doggerel nonsense lyrics. Liam just sang the bloody things. In that characteristic foghorn way that made him stand out in the first place, back in '95.
What C'MON YOU KNOW, the new Liam album proves once and for all is that you don't actually need Noel on board to make a semi-decent Oasis album. Because this is what this is. Oasis after all, whatever else they were, were never ever for one moment about progress. In fact Noel, Liam and the others in hindsight were probably the greatest Luddites in all of Rock and Roll history.
They did after all put out an album called Stop The Clocks, which was honest of them if not perhaps a testament to their enduring love of the poetry of W.H.Auden. Their's was a fanbase that never really asked for change from them.
They're certainly not going to get any of that from C'MON YOU KNOW. It's one of the most utterly undemanding Rock albums I've heard in a long time. Liam does what he does best. He not only stops the clocks. He turns them back. Twenty years or more.
This is a record that really knows what it's doing. It's a time machine. It takes you back to Oasis in their Brit Pop pomp when they actually seemed like a really good thing. I won't deny them that even though my skin crawls when someone puts them on a jukebox now.
Then it takes you back to the early Seventies and Oasis's Glam roots. Their huge appeal was surely largely about this, harking back to the footbll terraces, our shared youth and collective memory. There' are also plenty of reminders of The Faces here ,an absolute key component of both Noel and Liam's DNA.Led Zep and The Who for good measure At one point even Augustus Pablo of all people. Well that wonderful Ska and Reggae sound was certainly a huge part of those first years of the Seventies.
Then from there C'MON YOU KNOW goes back to what both Noel and Liam always claimed were their spititual roots even though I'm damned if I could really hear it at the time. Yes, to The Beatles. The Fab Four.
There are plenty of stark reminders , frankly steals from The Beatles here. Backwards Revolver guitar. Ringo's drum sound from Tomorrow Never Knows. More dogerel, nonsense Noel lyrics, filched first and firemost from I am The Walrus. None of it remotely as good as The Beatles of course but the connection at last makes at least partial sense to me.
There's lots to enjoy here. And frankly I never ever thought I'd say that about Liam again. It's a very clevely constructed record. A record with its tongue firmly in ts cheek. Also one with a great sleeve.Magpie revelry. It probably won't make my end of year list but I have to tip my hat to the guy. Frankly, Noel must be seething.
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