Oasis is one of the bands that hipsters and indie kids most love to hate. In fact I’m sure my fellow blog contributers here quite hate them, or at best they may be indifferent.
In the ’90s they were one of my favorite bands. And no this is not a story about how I hate them now and I’ve “outgrown” them. I do still like them. Although I do not listen to them as much as I used to and overall I find their music a bit too safe and formulaic for my tastes these days. That being said, I think they do what they do as well as anyone and I do think Liam Gallagher is one of the best singers in rock history. The Oasis swagger is something that put a lot of people off. To me it’s a welcome respite from all of the bashful indie rock of the last 20 years.
Anyway, this little article is an overview of the albums Oasis has released to date.
Definitely Maybe (1994)
Their debut album is in many ways still their best. It’s their most alive, most vital album. It’s the one I would recommend to anyone who is curious to what all of the fuss was about in the mid ’90s. It’s their only album (so far) where Liam sings lead on every cut and I think it’s a stronger album for that. Noel Gallagher is a decent enough singer but Liam’s voice has a certain quality to it that really makes the songs sound special.
Another thing that makes the album stand out in their catalog is the lack of ballads. The only ballad on the album is the final track “Married With Children.” But even that track is not the sort of “heartfelt” ballad that would fill their next album, it’s more of the sarcastic smart ass variety.
The album contains most of their heaviest rock songs like “Columbia” & “Bring It On Down.” It includes some of their greatest anthems like “Live Forever” & “Slide Away” and some of their coolest rockers like “Supersonic” & “Cigarettes & Alcohol.”
(What’s The Story) Morning Glory? (1995)
Definitely Maybe was their rock n roll masterpiece and they followed it up with Morning Glory? which was their pop masterpiece. Which one you like more will depend on your tastes more than the quality of the albums as I think they are probably equally good. The album includes their biggest worldwide hit “Wonderwall” along with the Noel sung ballad “Don’t Look Back In Anger” and their psychedelic epic “Champagne Supernova.” A couple of my favorite tracks on the album are “Cast No Shadow” & “Some Might Say.”
Be Here Now (1997)
Overblown overproduced coke fueled wall of sound album where all of the songs are two or three minutes too long and have about 25 tracks of guitar on them. For all of these apparent faults I still think it’s a great album. In some ways it’s a great album because of the excesses.
There’s been very few rock albums in the last 30 years that have anywhere near the bombastic level of attitude that you can hear in this album. This was a band that really believed they were the greatest in the world. Although they weren’t actually (Radiohead was) that attitude is something that adds to my enjoyment of the album rather than detracts. The absolute no apologies attitude of the album, the no concern that the songs are all ridiculously too long, that they all have way too many overdubs, that it’s just all completely over the top. There’s no apologies for that and to me the album has aged very well because of that. In a lot of ways it’s my favorite Oasis album now.
It opens with “D’You Know What I Mean?” which I think is one of their greatest songs and definitely their greatest opener (although I’m sure many will disagree with me about that.) I love the absolutely huge sound of this song. The giant guitar solos, the backwards vocals, the layers of weird sounds, the strings, the nearly 8 minute running time. This is a song that makes no bones about wanting to kick your face in. Whether it achieves this goal or not is of course a matter of opinion but the ballsoutness of the attempt is enough to endear me.
Even the album’s ballads seem to be amped up. “Stand By Me” and “Don’t Go Away” are Oasis’ version of power ballads and I prefer them greatly to their 80s counterparts. Sure they may have been more effective if they had been recorded in a more a subdued fashion, but then they wouldn’t have fit in with the rest of the album, now would they? You need the big strings and the big guitar solos otherwise it wouldn’t be a proper Be Here Now track.
One of my favorite tracks is the Noel sung “Magic Pie” particularly because of the absolutely huge “ahhh ahhh ahhh” finish to it. It’s one of the most psychedelic moments in all of Oasis’ catalog. Another favorite of mine is “Fade In-Out” which has a strange sort of demented country & western sound to it and doesn’t really sound like any other Oasis song. It also features Johnny Depp on slide guitar (yes, really.)
The album also includes the most ridiculously over the top Oasis song to date “All Around The World.” All 9 minutes and 20 seconds of it. If you think it sounds like an a telephone commercial that’s because it is now.
The was a huge amount of anticipation for this album after the huge worldwide success of Morning Glory? and it was the last album Oasis recorded where you could really hear the full on swagger in the recording. The bad reception that many had of the album seemed to hurt their confidence moving forward.
The video for “All Around The World” is below (this is the single version and is only 7 minutes long.)
Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants (2000)
This is Oasis’ most purposefully psychedelic album to date and considering my love for psychedelic music that should make it my favorite of theirs and I do like it a lot more than most do and I do think it is underrated. But that being said Oasis doesn’t do psychedelic as well as they do straight ahead rock & pop. They just aren’t experimental enough with song structure to make songs that really tweak the mind properly.
But that being said there are some very cool tracks on this album which are quite a lovely trip. The instrumental opener “Fuckin’ In The Bushes” sounds like Led Zeppelin + techno. Pretty cool. “Who Feels Love,” “Gas Panic!,” & “Roll It Over” are the three tracks I most highly recommend from the album. In fact I think if they could have made a whole album with the feeling of the four tracks I’ve mentioned it would have been quite awesome. But some of the other tracks just don’t really mesh with it very well and seem to be a bit uninspired in retrospect, particularly the Noel sung ballads and the rockers “I Can See A Liar” and “Put Yer Money Where Your Mouth Is.” Liam’s songwriting debut “Little James” isn’t one of their better tracks either.
Live version of “Gas Panic!” from 2000 (from the live album/video Familiar To Mililons)
Heathen Chemistry (2002)
This is easily Oasis’ low point (to date) in my opinion. It’s a very uninspired album whose best songs may have actually been written by Liam (that definitely tells you something.) The only songs that stand out for me are the opener “Hindu Times” which has a cool Indian sounding riff and sounds a bit like a Definitely Maybe throw back, and the Liam penned “Songbird” and “Born on a Different Cloud.” Noel’s ballads are a low point on this album particularly “Little by Little” which is one of my least favorite Oasis songs ever. “Stop Crying Your Heart Out” is an effective song but just sounds too “by the numbers” for me to get into, it’s just too cheesy. It’s featured on the soundtrack to the movie Butterfly Effect. In fact the only Noel sung song that I can stand (and there are four total) is “She Is Love” which has a bit of an old Oasis acoustic b-side sound to it (they released a lot of songs sort of like this in the ’90s as b-sides. Some of them can be hard on the b-side collection The Masterplan.)
Don’t Believe the Truth (2005)
Their most recent album to date was their “comeback” album and it’s quite a good one. For the first time it sounds like Gem Archer and Andy Bell are true members of the band and their contributions are among the highlights. In fact Noel Gallagher who used to write all of Oasis’ songs (he wrote every song on their first three albums) only wrote 5 of the 11 tracks on the album.
Liam Gallagher’s contributions (particularly “Love Like A Bomb” & “God Thinks I’m Abel”) are great as well and he appears to be growing into an excellent songwriter.
But I think Noel wrote the best song on the album, “Let There Be Love.” To me it sounds like an instant classic. It’s one of those songs where I don’t understand why it wasn’t a worldwide hit. Liam sings the verses/chorus and Noel sings the bridge. It’s one of the few times Oasis has managed to be understated with their production and it works brilliantly. It’s like some missing Simon & Garfunkel classic. Like Oasis’ version of “Bridge Over Troubled Waters.”
An earlier version of the song was heard as a bootleg in 2000 called “It’s A Crime.”
Noel’s “The Importance Of Being Idle” & “Part Of The Queue” showcased a more mature and experimental side to his songwriting.
Overall while the album doesn’t quite reach the brilliance of their ’90s output it was a great return to form after the very disappointing Heathen Chemistry and it does make me excited to hear their next album which is supposed to come out sometime this year. No title or release date has been announced as of yet.
The video for “The Importance of Being Idle” is quite groovy as well. Watch/listen below: