Album of the week: Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds

DESPITE the contrary evidence of the limping latter stages of Oasis, the Gallagher brothers, at loggerheads or otherwise, are a stronger proposition together than apart.

The Singer needs The Song, and vice versa. Given the volatility of their relationship, it is always possible that the pair will be reunited further down the line but since Noel The Song announced that he was leaving, thereby effectively splitting the band, the siblings have been competing parties.

The younger, impulsive Gallagher rushed to reconvene, gathering the remaining Oasis troops and forming Beady Eye, a jam band of guys with the advantage of several world tours’ experience already behind them. But even Liam’s charismatic frontman chops couldn’t guarantee a hit album.

Gallagher Sr took his time, the apparently cooler head with arguably less to prove. Except that he, like his brother, has everything to prove. Where Liam is expected to bring it in the live arena, the burden on Noel is to deliver his riposte by album.

He could have gone out on a limb as the Oasis lone ranger, surprised the fans with a solo singer/songwriter project. It’s not like he hasn’t already covered for his errant brother with solo acoustic interludes at Oasis gigs. But that would have been a leap of faith, a polarising statement of intent and just too damn adventurous for this essentially conservative musician.

You can’t really blame him for taking the path of least resistance and forming a backing band – the rather less illustrious High Flying Birds featuring the bassist from The Zutons and some other session blokes you definitely won’t have heard of.

The Jefferson Airplane/Richie Havens-referencing name maintains the Gallagher tradition for poor monikers and titles. Also hopelessly ingrained is the almost unconscious borrowing from classic artists – across the album, Gallagher drops lyrical references to The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Kinks, Hendrix, musical nods to The Stones and Primal Scream, and even cannibalises some of his own back catalogue in an ever-decreasing circle of creativity.

Rather than go for an entirely clean break, Noel has recycled a couple of unreleased Oasis songs, which have been floating around for some years in live/demo versions, as a “last postcard from the Oasis years”.

As suggested by its title, (I Wanna Live In A Dream In My) Record Machine is Gallagher in woozy psychedelic mode, with an accompanying marinade of strings, while Stop The Clocks contemplates mortality as a lighter-waving anthem, before the end is signalled by a brief but potent guitar squall.

Not that there are any surprises among the newer tracks. There is nothing here that would have sounded out of place in an Oasis set, from the muted glam stomp of (Stranded On) The Wrong Beach to the love song If I Had A Gun, which is loaded with a round of clichéd sentiments.

The limit of his songwriting spectrum is not the issue – Motörhead and The Ramones built fantastic catalogues with even less variety – it is the mediocrity of the material. Lavish, heady strings and the epic contribution of the Crouch End Festival Chorus can’t save Everybody’s On The Run; neither can the ballsy trombone break at the end of Dream On, another title to make the heart sink. Both are pieced together using the random Gallagher lyric generator – exhortations to hang on, to hold on, references to a bit of light precipitation and the (knowing?) commentary that “I’m running out of batteries”.

There is a strain of wistful uncertainty running through some of the lyrics, in contrast to the combative but ultimately hollow confidence of Beady Eye. On The Death of You and Me, this is presented as a maudlin amble in the vein of The Importance of Being Idle, with embellishing Dixieland brass interlude.

Soldier Boys And Jesus Freaks is cut from similar Kinks-influenced cloth, from the Sunny Afternoon descending chords to the “village green” reference. There’s some nice soulful trumpet and a stab at a politicised lyric (“all around the world the holy men will twist the words of way back when”) but nothing to challenge complacency.

AKA…What A Life! is said to be inspired by Rhythim is Rhythim’s house classic Strings of Life but only in as much as it is built on an insistent piano riff over which Gallagher sings a simple but effective soaring tune with vaguely druggy lyrical associations. Hold the glowsticks, but this is as high-flying as these birds get.

There is still hope – a necessary commodity for fans of the Gallaghers – in the shape of a second album, to be released next year, on which Noel has collaborated with psychedelic duo Amorphous Androgynous, aka Future Sound of London’s Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans. There has been tantalising talk of funk and Krautrock influences but, whether or not these come to fruition, at least working with other writers might force him out of his comfort zone.

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds

Sour Mash, £12.99

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