I get up - when I'm down
I can't swim - but my soul won't drown
I do believe - I got flair
I got speed and I walk on air
They were easily the best thing happening in Rock in the ‘90s, the perfect feelgood antidote to the shoe-gazing angst-ridden grunge maladjusts that the decade unfortunately spawned in abundance. They were a band of swaggering attitude laden, fight picking, shagadellic un-PC louts who wrote priceless chantalong songs and stunningly direct ballads. One of them was gifted with a startling ear for melody and the ability to rip off other people’s songs, turn them into million selling records and not get taken to the cleaners for doing so. Another, the songwriter’s ever-feuding brother had pipes of gold, singing, sneering, slurring songs as the most-unique rock voice since whenever. The other members in the band were basically filler. Of the brit-pop brigade, Oasis were the kings. Blur was too clever by half; Radiohead too student-like; the Verve had much too much substance to be straight-ahead rock; Stereophonics were just not lucky enough and the Charlatans, Supergrass were just not good enough. That suited Oasis fine as they took on the mantle of ‘the saviours rock in the ‘90s’ and did so with the arrogance of heir-apparents, rewarding all who believed in the saving power of rock’n’roll with two masterworks Definitely Maybe and What’s the Story Morning Glory.
After those double peaks, unfortunately and quite inevitably, the only way was down for Oasis: Sure enough, with the money flowing in, the band seemed to stop caring and the talent of Noel Gallagher soon seemed to be set to disappear in one trip down to the pub too many or worse yet to be snorted up into oblivion. They staggered through, plagued by internecine in-fighting bloated on the high life with bloated tunes on Be Here Now and thereafter the stuttering Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. Only The Masterplan a compilation of their old out-takes and B-sides and Familiar to Millions, their live album, was any cop and through comparison only served to point out what was wrong in the here and now. The bombast was there but the tunes were not. As the brother Gallaghers gorged themselves on the high life, band members, girlfriends, record companies and wives were jettisoned and new ones came in. No one cared and the world was set to tune out. And now with their backs against the wall the G-boys have released Heathen Chemistry (locally released as The Hindu Times), their fifth proper album.
And against all odds, Heathen Chemistry is their strongest set of songs in some time. While Noel still seems to be struggling at times with his songwriting, Liam, the most unlikely of sources, has stepped into the breach with a trio of proper songs. This album is easily better than Standing on the Shoulder of Giants and Be Here Now and is infact in the class of Definitely Maybe and its good songs are almost as good as those on (What’s the Story) Morning Glory. This, dear reader, is high praise indeed as the former was one of the most accomplished debuts of the ‘90s and the latter was the high water mark for all Brit-rock.
For all his misfires on the album – there are several - Noel can still write gems: The two standout and immediately catchy tracks on the album are the Noel-penned singles: ‘Hindu Times’ and ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’ The first is a behemoth rocker and is made memorable by the I-am-a-rocker-and-it-is-great-to-be-one lyrics “God give me soul in my rock n roll/ yeeeeah / cuz I get so high I just can’t feel it’ (on par with ‘Live Forever’ and ‘Roll with It’) and Liam Gallagher’s vocals. Whatever be Liam’s faults, and there are many, he is the ultimate rock singer, all conviction and swagger and gifted with a voice that ought to be insured for millions. ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’ is the heart-on-sleeve ballad and Liam shows his versatility by being thoroughly convincing on this track too. However, Noel, the author of the song is the star here. Gas Panic, the high mark on the SOTSOG was a song shot through with paranoia (‘And my friends don’t seem familiar/ and my enemies all know my name’) and showed Noel on the verge of cracking up. ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’ seems to be the lullaby that stopped him from going over the edge: Liam reassuringly sings ‘Hold On/ Don’t be scared’ and lends a steadying hand.
Outside these two, the rest of the album is essentially songs by the Gallaghers to, about and for the women in their lives, past and present. Noel still seems bitter at his ex, Meg Mathews, and really lays into her with his song Force of Nature, a forgettable song on the whole, but only interesting for it roasts Ms. Mathews with lines such as ‘Smoking all my stash/ and burning all my cash/ I bet you knew right away/ it's all over town that/ the sun's going down/ on the days of your easy life.’
One thing Force of Nature also demonstrates is that lyrically Oasis have never really been accomplished. C’mon, who rhymes ‘cash’ with ‘stash’? In the past they have at best been simple and direct and at worst have written bad nursery rhymes (The sink is full of fishes/ she has got dirty dishes on her brain?). Nothing seems to have changed on that end. Still if one looks beyond that they seem to manage to cram a lot of joy into their music with lyrics that benefit from the same lack of sophistication. The counter to the bitterness of Force of Nature is She Is Love, the revelation and most joyous number on the album. It is most probably about Noel’s baby daughter Anais or his new beau and is a song filled with the wonder of being in love. Noel on this song finally seems to have succeeded to touch the songwriting peaks of his heroes, Bacharach and Leonard.
Having said that it is sad to note that outside of this song, on the whole, a sense of darkness and anger seems to have crept into Noel’s lyrics (and possibly life). The songs come off the worse because of them. The joie-de-vivre that came naturally to Noel at the outset of Oasis seems to have faded away and he now sounds jaded. The man who wrote ‘You and I are gonna live forever’ and endeared himself to the multitudes is now writing ‘In the end we will leave it all behind,’ and seems to be wrestling with his own mortality or is maybe feeling his age. Sometimes, as in Little By Little (Little by little, I gave you everything you ever dreamed of/Little by Little, the wheels of your life have slowly fallen off) Noel manages to cover up the lack of joy with a winning, hummable melody. At other times he does not: Force of Nature is a case in point. At others times he spouts off sophomoric lines like ‘True perfection has to be imperfect/ I know that that sounds foolish but it's true.’ Oasis at the end of the day are master of naïve, almost dumb heartfelt rock; lyrically they should remain dumb and not aspire to be the Beatles or to have a brain.
What holds the album back from being truly great are
the several clunkers on the album. The Gem Archer (new member) written Hung
in a Bad Place could have remained hanging in that bad place and not seen
the light. The same can be said of the other new member Andy Bell’s instrumental ‘A
Quick Peep’ which seems only to be there to be skipped over. Even Noel
contributes a crap track or two: ‘(Probably) All in
the mind’ is sub-par and is saved only by the catchy hook-line. Moreover,
another down to the album is that Noel sings three songs on it. He is a good
singer, but when one has a great singer like Liam in the band, the songs could
have been better if Noel had let go of his ego and let kid brother Liam cut
loose on them.
Musically, on Heathen
Chemistry the Beatles influence is all there for all to see. Songbird is
a Paul McCartney’s Blackbird done up for the Nineties. Liam seems to
copy Lennon note for note in his Better
The revelation of the album as mentioned already is Liam and how good his songs are. Songbird is great. Better Man shows he has a long way to go still and just aping John Lennon (not a bad person to ape, mind you) is not sufficient. One needs to have something to say. For now, instead of lyrics Liam just adds Yeah Yeahs to his song.
This review probably seems skewed in that it has picked too many faults with the album and might make it appear that the album isn’t worth checking out. Far from it, it is a heck of a lot of fun (best goodtime rock album till the new Def Leppard album comes out). It is just that Oasis have fallen from being sublime to just fun now. That at the end of day is still a great rarefied thing in a scene infested with deep (read dull) bands like Staind, but one just hopes this is not a blip, but a sure sign of recovery for Noel Gallagher and the start of a comeback. Or perhaps it is that Noel has just simply run out of great songs to rip off and is now just left with good ones.
(Send shoutouts and raves to maqsimillion@hotmail.com and for links to listen to excerpts from the album check out www.qayyums.com/maq/)