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Better than the first two? Course not. Better than the last three?
Definitely. In other words it is the record which should've followed Morning
Glory.
It slips into life slowly, deceptively, growling into a bold swagger for
Andy Bell's Turn Up The Sun. But DBTT is not the Oasis we've come to know.
Far from it.
There's a lo-fi, stripped feel to the record which strikes you as you
listen to it. Yet at the same time two years and much production has gone
into DBTT, which breathes harmonica solos, keyboards and extended percussion
(Zak Starkey continues to drum while percussionist extraordinaire Lenny
Castro guests) allowing Oasis to flex across folk, pop and psychedelia,
which partly confirms the band's heavy name checking of The Kinks and
Highway 61.
More so than ever, they wear their music influences on their sleeves.
Mucky Fingers borrows the chug-a-chug of The Velvet Underground's I'm Waiting For
The Man, but lyrically ("All the fonies that roam at night / When I've gone
yeah you look like you missed me / So come along with me, don't ask why") and
vocally, Noel has never sounded more reinvigorated in a decade.
The cynics suggest the once great songwriter is struggling. Momentarily
it can appear that Noel is at odds. He only contributes five this time, but
the gems remain all his. Part Of The Queue lends more than a few nods to
The Stranglers' Golden Brown, but Noel's redemptive words ("Stand tall
/ Stand proud / Every beginning is breaking its promise / I'm having trouble
just finding some soul in this town") and performance are again on fine
form. His closer, Let There Be Love, crafts a brilliant Gallagher duet, a
spiritual hybrid of Live Forever and Let It Be, utterly filled with the kind
soul they exported so abundantly in the 94/95 season.
The other six are no fillers either. Gem Archer has a catchy potential
single in A Bell Will Ring. Keep The Dream Alive (Andy Bell) rotates loose
urgency and desert psychedelia which waters into one of the most
Oasis-sounding of the lot.
Liam's three continue his surprising progression. Love Like A Bomb
betrays more of the Songbird karma no one thought he could be capable of
showing. Guess God Think I'm Abel, a tender tribute to Noel along the same
lines as Acquiesce, bridges the record wonderfully. The thrashy Meaning Of
Soul, barely two minutes long, seems to have been written shortly after Liam
got his teeth smashed in Germany, but it gets better each time you hear
it.
Which is very much reflective of the album. You won't be blown away in
the unique way Oasis' first albums did. Yet with every listen DBTT pulls you
in.
It's worth remembering that it took The Beatles and The
Stones six albums (Rubber Soul, Aftermath) to mature before they
eventually came up with their big hitters (Revolver, Sgt Pepper, Beggars
Banquet and Sticky fingers were yet to follow). A mature Oasis at the same
stage claim two classic records, are off the drugs and have regained a
stride which maybe, just maybe, will lead to something great once again.
While that time is not now, Oasis are back, still relevant and, in Liam's
words, "still waiting for someone to take the torch."
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