Gee muses

Okay, I take some of it back. Oasis are not washed up old Britpop has-beens. While 2005’s Don’t Believe The Truth had white-limbed little Pommy critics bouncing up and down in their bedsits proclaiming the return of the Gallaghers, some of us were less convinced. Okay, it wasn’t quite the tub of lard most of their recorded work since the brilliant (What’s The Story) Morning Glory had been - stodgy, gormless, piss-driven and unimaginative. It at least had legs and and some sort of fitness and life about the songs. Basically, it was b-grade rock. Pleasant but no nutcracker.

Enter stage right Dig Out Your Soul, the first Oasis album in three years and an absolute corker. Somewhere the Gallagher boys and their current compatriots have discovered what made them compelling a decade and a half ago. The songs are sometimes quasi-psychedelic, sometimes bluesy, occasionally Beatlesque, mostly rock hard and imaginative. There are moments when you seriously want to examine the album cover to check this really is an Oasis record. Noel has his writing mojo back, his six songs are standouts, no more so than on the utterly gorgeous, swirling, Falling Down, but the biggest surprise is saved for the album ending Soldier On, a mood piece that expands the Oasis world dramatically. Elsewhere, Liam’s Lennonesque, I’m Outta Time, is so convincing you could believe the ex-Beatle was reincarnated for the sessions and then there’s a beautiful piece of Gallagher driftwood called The Turning that is just a great song. But it’s the sprawling, brawling, slightly weary, punchy rock (check out Bag It Up and Waiting For The Rapture) that dominates the rest of Dig Out Your Soul that says here is a band that has done what the title suggests. What a surprise.

Guitarist Gem Archer is having a cuppa , elevenses as they say, and bemoaning the unplanned tour break forced on the band after a stage incident involving Noel.

“Basically, this guy got on stage and pushed Noel,” Gem says, “and because of that he has three broken ribs. Five gigs have been cancelled, Hopefully, there won’t be any more. Noel’s in a lot of pain and the ribs aren’t a great injury to deal with. They heal slowly. It’s like a broken nose - not much you can do for it. But it’s one of those freak little things you can’t predict. I actually thought he’d got the injury from falling on the monitor but it was the impact of the guy.”

(Subsequent to this interview, Oasis returned to touring.)

Gem’s a funny bugger; nice guy, easy to talk to, but pay him a compliment and he’s suspicious that there’s an underlying agenda. For instance, say the album’s a ball-tearer and he says he doesn’t know how to take it - the insinuation is that such a compliment means that the band’s previous works were shite. Gem’s been there nearly a decade now so let’s be honest - some of it is and some of it isn’t. That’s rock’n'roll. Nobody makes/made great album after great album. Not The Stones, not The Beatles, not Oasis. But what it does say is that Oasis are still touchy around the edges. They’ve been wearing it for years now; the bad Gallagher boys, particularly Liam, have been fodder for the press and, in a lot of cases, rightfully so. But, you know, some of that just adds to the legend. Rock’nroll loves myth and feeds off it. Nobody used to apologise for being a rock pig. Lemmy and his Motorhead lads would die rather than apologise for any number of excesses. Jim Morrison would unzip his fly at the notion. What I’m saying is that the music is one thing, and some times when it’s good enough - like on Dig Out Your Soul - it exceeds any inbuilt prejudices based on lifely actions.

Gem says it’s like this when you talk about the gut of this band: “The thing that is so apparently unchanging is that it’s still all about the music. Like if you find something that blows your head off you’ve got to play it to the boys. Especially with Noel and Liam, it’s so not about the money or fame. We could be bigger than we are but that’s not what’s important. It’s all about refining and refining and refining Oasis world.

“I guess everybody has changed with age. Liam is really into his private life when he’s off the road. It’s more distilled down to who we actually are now. And nothing has a chance of spoiling it. But, at the end of the day, it’s about the music, man.”

The music here came about because Oasis worked out that fiddling around in the studio for months on end wasn’t working for them. According to Gem, Dig Out Your Soul wasn’t demoed too much, nor did the band record, stop, take a break, record, stop, take a break, ad infinitum. Much of it was recorded in a block, some of the songs were written “on the hoof. And, thankfully, there’s no cutting and pasting musical parts electronically for Oasis; they don’t take it to pieces on the computer and spend hours reconstructing, adding and subtracting. “We’re very old school, ” Gem says. He then makes an interesting observation about modern music as a way of explanation. “I tend to like songs now rather than the whole album. There’s not one band I want to immerse myself in; you know, a band where you buy into the whole thing like you used to years ago. I used to be entranced by the whole deal. “I try to live in a little bubble in my head and it’s my life … “

And in that statement lies something of the essence of what perhaps make Dig Out Your Soul the best Oasis album in 13 years. You see, you actually want to listen to the whole album; immerse yourself in it. In this world of disposable music - which is exactly what Gem’s getting at - a lot of bands, producers, record companies, have lost the notion of what actually makes an album great. For the record companies it might be having three songs that they can promote as singles, for the producer it may be getting a perfect sound, for the band it’s keeping themselves happy and, hopefully, everybody else with a vested interest too. Too complicated. Too hard. Too many interests. Too little soul. It wasn’t that way when most of the great albums were made; Oasis have realised that and - in doing so - have made a great record. And when Gem starts a long rave about vinyl and its virtues, you know they’ve reconnected. “Music, it’s about it all - gigs, records, gear, signing up to something you believe in. Rock’n'roll - you can’t keep the bugger down. It’s a religion. It’s a way of life.” Maybe? No! Definitely.