Having his cake and eating it – a good way to describe life in the Noel Gallagher world since he walked away from Oasis in 2009.
While his marooned bandmates drifted aimlessly in their peculiar Beady Eye lifeboat, Gallagher was quickly back on terra firma with a suitcase packed full of his former band’s back catalogue and a debut solo record which could have been re-stamped as its eighth studio effort without many batting an eyelid.
Arenas, festival headlines and world tours soon followed, his second High Flying Birds LP Chasing Yesterday hinting at a broadening horizon without ever giving the impression that he was quite yet prepared to cut ties with a history he regularly claimed to have no lingering desire for.
Thus, if timing is everything in life, the point at which Noel has finally decided to ditch the desert spoon and sample some more outlandish nouveau cuisine couldn’t really have come at a more inopportune time.
In 2017, interest in Oasis has felt as fevered as it has done since at least 2005’s Don’t Believe The Truth, and books could be written on how Liam Gallagher has emphatically tapped into this zeitgeist whilst concurrently using social media to take back control of his own public narrative – the white noise underpinning it all is a Twitter feed whose unrelenting tone, subject matter and conversation increasingly resembles an online, 21st century version of Ross and Will’s ‘I Hate Rachel’ club.
Folk have always loved a bit of over-the-fence, fork-tongued gossip, and right now Noel Gallagher is their village enemy. With rolling pins already sharpened then, last month Nasty Noel-era got its first single.
Holy Mountain – the track that launched a thousand memes, and burnt the topless towers of good-will – is despite all the digital bluster simply one of Gallagher’s most blithe tunes, an emphatic nod to his love of the glam, mid-sixties pop of Tommy James & The Shondells, or The Move, but which suffers from his old problem of sticking around at least 90 seconds too long to truly recapture the spirit of that age.
Fort Knox bravely led the second wave, its synthetic, soundtrack span exposing the clearest influence of David Holmes and as far removed from ‘the melancholy of those songs of lost love or lost youth’ as we’re ever likely to get, and which the producer was so at pains to avoid during on/off recording sessions in Belfast that first began listening to a stack of vinyl on the day Lou Reed died.
Second single It’s A Beautiful World is much closer to home, but remains at the front gate thanks to a moody kraut-rock riff, a French spoken-word interlude and production values which verge on being overly polished but just about tow the line. She Taught Me How To Fly too is recognisably vintage Noel Gallagher album track territory, this time a dream-like vibe setting it apart, gorgeously accentuated by vocals pushed right to the front of the mix, and which are absolutely perfect for songs such as this.
The groove really gets going on Be Careful What You Wish For, which stands out for the departure in songwriting rather than mere production, Holmes this time able to take a back seat as Gallagher does all the work on a track which loops around a bass line and intangible backing vocals in a way he’s never attempted before.
This highlight swiftly sits in contrast with Black & White Sunshine, plodding filler of the type which apparently must always be tolerated on a Noel Gallagher record. It ambles along with some of those slightly clunky lyrics (“Here in the jungle…”) as a sure-fire Chasing Yesterday left-over if we didn’t know so well the story of this album’s creation from scratch in the studio.
The quasi-title track does begin the final act on a high however, the groove back and oscillating for what should be a new live favourite as it offers up a rare arms-in-the-air invitation and concludes the record with perhaps a hand of reconciliation to those who are craving it.
The familiarity of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Chasing Yesterday lent them an immediacy, if not a legacy – the folded arms and scowled expressions with which so many greeted the early teasers of Who Built The Moon? put it in stark contrast to those predecessors before it even hit the shelves.
For all the twists and turns, orthodox and unorthodox strokes, ultimately Who Built The Moon?’s greatest asset, and greatest quality, is its ambition, the ambition of a songwriter long accused of playing it safe finally squaring up to challenge preconceived perceptions. After all these years, it puts Noel Gallagher back at a starting point; ‘a new spirit of adventure has been sparked’, future directions may now go anywhere.
Bonus track Dead In The Water could well be a tantalising sign-post to the next endeavour; what could be more opposed to Who Built The Moon? than a stripped-to-the-bones acoustic record that has nothing to hide behind?
Indeed, this album’s legacy may well be the unpredictability it has sparked. No longer feasting on cake, perhaps only briefly dabbling in noveau, a buffet of choice is now out there to explore, and keeping the courage of convictions through this period of relative adversity should result in all the freedom he needs to try anything in the future.
Nasty Noel-era got the album it didn’t want, but in years to come the timing might just prove to have been perfect.