Hack at work
Noel Gallagher’s goes solo: Liam who?
13 Oct 2011
Noel Gallagher’s high Flying Birds (Sour Mash)
Britpop fans will feel an irresistible stirring of the loins at the build up to Everybody’s On the Run, the opening track of Noel Gallagher’s first post-Oasis album. A Ringo-style drum fill introduces a swirl of strings gathering around the melody, as a choir pipes up, acoustic guitars strum and a Manchester voice lets fly with “You can’t find the feeeeeeeeeling”, improbably stretching the vowel.
It is not perhaps the voice we’re most used to, softer in tone than brother Liam’s, lacking the aggressive edge associated with most Oasis classics, but by the time Noel has rhymed “feeling” with “ceiling”, then shifted into a chorus imploring listeners to “hold on”, you might as well surrender to the simple, joyous pleasures of another belting, sing-a-long anthem.
High Flying Birds is the best collection of Gallagher tunes since his Morning Glory days.
“You’ve been drifting and stealing / Try to walk in my shoes, but they don’t belong to you,” Noel sings on what may be the album’s only reference to his sibling. Now that both camps have released albums, you have to say that big brother has shown everyone why he was known as The Chief.