Culture

Noel Gallagher has to be one of the most tragic figures in rock history.

Okay, he’s not quite up there with Daniel Johnston or Syd Barrett, but he is piteous in his own way. Like The Beatles (yes, it’s sentence three and I’ve already made that comparison), Oasis started out as lovable British lads who sang rollicking love songs. I won’t pretend the heights of Britpop were as towering as Beatlemania. But boy, could Noel write stadium-sized pop rock. “Live Forever” was gorgeous. “Supersonic” was better. “Wonderwall” got played to death by mainstream radio, but not without good reason.

Sadly, Noel is as creatively complacent as AC/DC. As much as he might praise The Beatles for their innovation, he never jumped off the deep end like they did. He’s been dressing his music up in references to revolution since day one, and yet he still has never taken a walk on the wild side. The closest he came was on the much-maligned Oasis albums Be Here Now and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. Contrary to popular belief, I would call those the best records Oasis ever made. Why? Because on songs like “Fade In-Out” and “Who Feels Love?” and “Gas Panic!” (all of the songs with ugly punctuation in the title, apparently), we actually got to hear what an experimental Oasis might sound like. And it was glorious. Swirling, psychedelic, elemental and glorious. Suddenly, those lofty choruses had something interesting propping them up.

Noel must surely see that so many comparable bands made their best material after turning their musical eyes to the horizon. Radiohead. Blur. The Beatles. How Noel can gush over albums like Sgt. Pepper’s and The White Album and not want to make such wonderfully weird music of his own is something that keeps me up at night. This conservatism, this utter staidness, continues to haunt him. Even after Oasis imploded and he began flying solo as Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, he still can’t let go of stadium rock. Yes, the first High Flying Birds record made a couple of small attempts to mix things up, the piano-driven dance track “AKA … What a Life!” being the best example. But bloody hell, Noel. As long as you maintain this blokeish sobriety, you’re never going to fly as high as we’d like you to.

Granted, new album Chasing Yesterday is a tad more experimental than the last High Flying Birds record. If Noel still hasn’t let his hair down on solo album number two, he has at least loosened his tie. On tracks like opener “Riverman”, there is a sense of bluesy, breezy, “Time of the Season”-esque cool. The fact that he chose a track as slow-burning as “Riverman” to kick off the album, instead of one as staggeringly pompous as “Everybody’s on the Run” on the last LP, does suggest some degree of artistic development. And when he does return to stadium rock on “In the Heat of the Moment” and “Ballad of the Might I”, there is more rhythmic anxiety than we’re used to.

But it isn’t enough. If I could somehow divorce my misgivings towards Noel from my experience of Chasing Yesterday, I’d probably give it a higher grade. But I can’t. All I’d be doing is encouraging Noel to play it safe once again on HFB3. As somebody who once called Oasis their favourite band, I’ve been waiting an ungodly amount of time for Noel Gallagher’s earthshattering “experimental album”. I thought we might get it when he was working with pioneering electronic group Amorphous Androgynous. But after teasing us with the sublime “Shoot a Hole into the Sun”, the collaboration fell through. I even held out hope for Chasing Yesterday being that record. But no. He’s clung to his dad rock sensibilities and delivered yet another tepid album that only ever hints at greatness. For most of its duration, Noel doesn’t try to explore new ground as much as recreate the anthemic glory of his Morning Glory? days. Chasing yesterday indeed.