Noel Gallagher will forever be praised and tormented for the smash hit “Wonderwall” in his previous band Oasis. At its peak, Oasis was the biggest band in the world, and that’s not just Noel Gallagher’s equally big mouth speaking. Definitely Maybe became the UK’s fastest-selling debut album of all time, and Oasis was also the UK’s most successful band of the ‘90s as they managed a string of 22 consecutive top-10 singles.
Like so many other great bands, egos conflicted and brothers Noel and singer Liam Gallagher were unable to reconcile their differences. Noel Gallagher is notorious for speaking his uncensored and unfiltered mind, as is apparent in this hilarious interview with Rolling Stone. A brief sample to best sum up his attitude is his response to Simon Vozick-Levinson’s question “Are you excited to tour this album?”
“Of course. It’s the yin to the album’s yang, isn’t it? Who would want to be Brian Wilson, sitting in a studio in a nappy, eating a fucking carrot with your little fat feet in a sandpit, not going on tour? Fuck that.”
Gallagher formed his new band, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, following Oasis’s break up in 2009. Chasing Yesterday is the band’s second studio album.
While much of the album is a push toward new sonic horizons for Gallagher, the opening chords of the album in “Riverman” are a blatant homage to “Wonderwall.” The similarity confirms the album title of Chasing Yesterday, as if the only way for a Gallagher brother to continue is by rewriting the seminal Oasis hit.
That’s not to say the song isn’t enjoyable, but as the beginning song of the album, it is a bit distracting.
Sprinkled throughout are songs about the ideological transformation Gallagher underwent while making this album. On “The Dying Of The Light,” he said, “I was told the streets were paved with gold/ there’d be no time for getting old, when we were young.” The middle-aged Gallagher realizes that he no longer can live the same lifestyle he had as a young man and that he now must live his lifestyle of a “faithful sheepdog,” as he told Rolling Stone.
The album has an honest moment of realization with “You Know We Can’t Go Back.” It’s sung to a lover, but in reality, it more likely than not serves as a formal farewell to Oasis. The song feels like the pre-closing credits song where the troubled lovers make up in a romantic comedy, but this time, the resolution is a complete separation from the past and a dedicated continuation to his current project.
“You Know We Can’t Go Back” fits as the second to last song of Chasing Yesterday because it allows closure, but also feels like a new beginning, which leads to the final track, “Ballad Of The Mighty I.” It’s propelled by a driving bass line and Gallagher’s narcissistic charm which seems to have finally set him free of the wonderwalls which incarcerated him for so long.
Follow Craig on Twitter @wgwcraig