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CD Of The Week Oasis, Dig Out Your Soul




















These are intriguing times for Britain's most totemic rock band, even for those immune to their powers. After years of entrenched positions, Oasis's Gallagher brothers have swapped public roles. Once the pied piper of lairiness, Liam now jogs every morning, cooks salmon and retires early.

For so long the elder statesman, Noel continues to enjoy getting messy out on the town. Even though the debauchery of his Supernova Heights days is avowedly behind him, he's written a song about the high jinks of getting high, with the album opener, 'Bag It Up'.

As their new record's title suggests, Oasis are supplementing the safe rockers - like the singularly unshocking single 'The Shock of the Lightning' - with feints towards what you might call supernova depths. Or rather, an easily assimilable facsimile of depth that doesn't stray too far from the Beatles.

Their seventh album is persuasively psychedelic in parts, however, with more attention than usual to grooves, drones and Fab Four orientalism. This is good news. Dubbed 'krautpop' by Noel, 'Falling Down' actually replays the Chemical Brothers's 'Setting Sun' (on which Noel sang) only with fewer beats, and more haze.

Another track even sceptics might respect is 'Get Off Your High Horse Lady', a bluesy spaghetti Western dirge. Unfortunately, the psychedelics turn into a bad trip on Archer's 'To Be Where There's Life', a guitar-free, sitar-sodden Eastern pastiche. From there, you make your own fun, bingo-spotting the references to the Beatles' era - revolutions in heads, butterflies on wheels and the like.

There are more giggles, thanks to Liam, who seemingly can't write a song without the word 'song' in it: it recurs in 'I'm Outta Time', his most vulnerable ballad yet, 'Ain't Got Nothing', and album closer 'Soldier On'. Most priceless of all is the conviction with which Liam voices Andy Bell's song, 'The Nature Of Reality': 'The nature of reality/Is pure subjective fantasy', sneers the singer as he once might have hymned cigarettes and alcohol. Intriguing times, indeed.

Kitty Empire

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

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