The mid-week charts are placing this album at number 1 and there’s no real expectation of that changing by the weekend; impressive performance for a debut, but then again this is the sort of success that Noel is used to enjoying.

The album gets underway with “Everybody’s On the Run”, which immediately reminds you how big this guy can compose. Following up on that theme “Dream On” will have you singing along to the chorus before the end of your first listen through. This kind of demonstration of a songwriter and performer working at the top of his game continues throughout Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. This guy is delivering a bravura performance, and he knows he is.

There is a genuine challenge listening to this album though, and as much as I like the music I think it’s only right to point out that if you are an Oasis fan you will start to listen out for rogue notes or chord progressions that call to mind songs from their back catalogue. If Oasis escaped you, however, then welcome back from Mars, you missed out on a great band, and you are about to hear the man behind the music having learned all the lessons his craft has taught him.

One thing that Noel Gallagher has clearly not lost is his ability to abuse parentheses (or brackets, like these for example) when it comes to song titles. Seriously they aren’t needed and for a man who has set his stall out firmly in the “no-nonsense” territory you can’t help but feel disappointed in the unnecessary trait that has seen songs labelled: “(is this, or is this not), the title” since Definitely Maybe. Sorry Noel, it’s not clever, it’s pretentious and silly.

The weakest point of the album for me was “(I Wanna Live In a Dream In My) Record Machine” which Noel has stated was originally written for Oasis not this specific record. This underlines the point that he has moved on, and to me improved. Now I don’t want a queue of Oasis fanatics picketing outside, I’m not suggesting that his Oasis tunes weren’t good, they were great, but I think he has evolved as a musician and that’s fine with me, I hope you can accept it too. If not I suspect that by pointing out that “Stop The Clocks” sounds particularly Oasis and particularly amazing.

There is perhaps an irony between the musician and his music. Noel Gallagher has been the single most quotable person in the biz in the last twenty years, always ready with a witty sound bite or standout one-liner. Then we come to his solo debut, and unlike any Oasis album you may care to cite there is no out and out instant definitive moment or song and this is noticeable to such an extent that perhaps the best way to consider the album is as an album not a collection of individual songs. I have my own favourites, but as these don’t match other people who I’ve spoken with this indicates we aren’t necessarily in “that’s a clear single” territory as we used to be with Oasis.

I think there is a maturity and independent self-assuredness that we have only had glimpses of in the Oasis discography but it shines through in this album. That being said it may have come at the expense of edginess, and for a man with a light speed barbed tongue it seems to run at odds to his personality. Maybe, like Paul Weller before him, Noel Gallagher has just run out of musical axes to grind and wants to focus on making music that makes him happy to play.

I’ve taken the temperature of some people about this record before writing about Noel Gallagher’s Flying Brids because I knew that I was on potentially dicey ground. More than once people have said “it’s a bit boring” and, “all the songs sound the same,” and there’s not a lot I can say to that other than I don’t agree. This is subtler music than the sort many probably expected to hear. The variations may be less noticeable, but that to me isn’t a failure, it’s refinement.

Oasis have long been a standout band for me and memories of my own life are littered with their songs so it was with some depth of personal sadness when that fateful day came in 2009 when the Oasis bubble finally burst in Paris. To listen to Noel and Liam’s respective new musical ventures is a challenging business for a fan of their work together, and perhaps like their Mancunian forbears, The Smiths, their future interviews and reviews will always focus on retrospective comparisons and the possibility of reconciliation and reformation instead of what they are doing now. You look at Beady Eye and Liam’s eternal swagger shines through. You listen to Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and the compositional understanding of what makes a great song stands out; it just so happens that blending the two produced the definitive music and sound of its generation, and on a personal note, mine.

It seems inevitable, but there is genius in this album which will be overlooked if people can’t accept that Oasis is gone. Give Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds a fair chance and you shouldn’t be disappointed and if you are maybe you should think again about whether your problem is the music, or how that the music didn’t meet your expectations of what it would have sounded like with Liam involved.

Our Rating
7/10