Oasis: return of Mott The Doople

Last week’s Oasis Number One single with terrible ‘Lyla’, probably the worst single of their career, heralded the arrival of the band’s sixth studio album, ‘Don’t Believe The Truth’. And the older brother claims, again, that it is “The best album they’ve ever made” and will probably retract the opinion, again a regular occurrence, in about six month’s time.

The Gallaghers were star-people with Noel writing the songs and Liam singing ‘em. We now have a creative democracy which has led to there being four mediocre voices instead of one unifying writer. The band went on record with a claim of having had so many new songs - 66 - and could have done a double album but decided against it as this is their last disc under the Sony contract and didn’t feel generous. In other words - the next album is almost ready. God help us!

Call in the quality police; there is too much crap here to expect them to have held back some real goodies. It is also unforgivable for such ‘innovators’ to join the brigade of imitators. And, there is no justification, even though they are plagiarising themselves plagiarising some ‘giants’ of the past. Anyhow, Oasis have been as forward looking as the Starbucks’ coffee is strong.

The fellow Manchurians New Order claimed they had been burnt out after 1993 and that’s why they did nothing until 2001. The truth is more likely to be the members had been bereft of ideas as all the crappy side-projects kept proving in the meantime. And that’s where Oasis have been over the past several albums: their ‘muse’ also appears to have lost the collective’s mobie number.

‘Turn Up The Sun’ is “A bit like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, a stomper,” Noel is honest about it. ‘Keep The Dream Alive’ is “A song by Andy [Bell, bassist] that’s like The Stone Roses”; ‘A Bell Will Ring’ - “Gem [Archer, guitarist] wrote it. It’s the closest anyone’s got to sounding like [The Beatles’] ‘Revolver’.” For ‘Mucky Fingers’ he added – “Imagine Bob Dylan singing [The Velvet Underground’s] ‘Waiting For The Man’ with that frantic drumbeat”; ‘The Importance Of Being Idle’ is “A cross between The Kinks and The La’s about being a lazy f**ker.”

These Mancs have been riding the coattails of infamy for a fair while although they‘ve never been more that celeb-Artisans.

In the earliest days Oasis looked like a band with a sense of destiny, blowing at the eternal flame of (someone else’s) inspiration. They’ve even lost that…

6/10