Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds

Not a full review but just a first impression on Noel's new work.

I am an Oasis fan, but I'm also very critical about them. In fact, on all of their records I can find some flaws. The main is that there was always for me a skipping track on every single Oasis-related (counting Liam's band in) album - even on Morning Glory. And I admit that even though I consider Noel the genius of melody. And now here we go, Noel's first solo album. No filler at all. Everything in its place.

From the epic start of Everybody's On The Run, through rock-anthemic quality of Dream On, classical oasisy ballad If I Had a Gun, brilliant jazzy country of The Death of You and Me, yet another big anthem being Record Machine (the last part makes you sing on top of your lungs), surprising disco-influenced brilliant What a Life!, set of mid tempo rockers (Soldier Boys - a protest song!, Broken Arrow with efortlessly flowing beat and melody an huge chorus and The Wrong Beach where I especially like the slightly fuzzy guitar - ending with yet another epic - Stop the Clocks.

Brilliant from start to finish, one can feel guilty when trying to think about the worst song of the bunch - there is no such a thing. I like the production (a lil bit poppy compared to Oasis records and maybe that's a good thing), I like the artwork, the lenght of the tracks and the whole album is perfect timed.

Truly, maybe this is written hastily, just after the album went public, but I just don't see any reason why shouldn't I call it the best Noel album - the best measure for that is probably that this record could and will atract many non-oasis listeners and hopefully stand the test of time and be a testament to Noel's ability as a creator of melodies.

live forever

Yet another brick in the wall of wonder (Art of borrowing #3)

A friend of mine inspired me to write the 3rd part of the neverending story of musical similarities. She said:

hey, don't you think that Richard Ashcroft's song "Break the Nigh With Colour" has the similar verse vocal melody to that of "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Greenday?

I've been listening to Richard Ashcroft (and his band, The Verve) maniacally whole summer. I didn't spot the similarity then, but now I see it and I'm loving the moment! Vocal melody, especially the first 3 or 4 notes from each song are almost the same. Then both songs go in two different directions, good for them.

This reminded me of yet another discovery.

The Masterplan

Music industry has been revealing its secrets to me for some time now. In the country that I live in, music singles charts come from voting. In the 90s, when I first learned this truth, when someone wanted their favourite song to be on top of the charts one must of send a postcard or make a call to the radio station and vote. So actually there are no singles charts as the Brits, Americans, Germans know them.