DGSS review thread

It would be easy to ridicule Beady Eye, essentially Oasis sans Noel. It would be easy to snipe, to dismiss, to fill up a review with 'hilarious' comments about the band, their fan-base and what this album says about the current musical climate. You know what? It is easy, but that doesn't mean it's not fun. And so that's exactly what this review will contain.

The thing is; Beady Eye make it so easy. I'd love for Different Gear, Still Speeding to be a return to form, and to lavish praise on a three-piece free of the shackles of their former bands governing ego. I'd love, even moreso than this, to say that Andy Bell, he of disgracefully under-rated shoegazers Ride, had been encouraged to take more of a leading role and press the windswept euphoria of his earlier band onto Oasis's dated pub-rock template. But I can't. Because 'Different Gear, Still Speeding' is sh*t. It's really, really f*cking sh*t.

Now I don't have to resort to swearing, but I will. I can hardly avoid it. Beady Eye have created one of the most turgid and uninspiring albums that I have ever heard. The quality is extremely poor throughout; Liam sounds like he is forcing out a beer sh*t in the chorus of 'Millionaire'. At least I presume it's a chorus. By 'Beatles and Stones', one of many hilariously dreadful names given to the thirteen (unlucky for us) 'songs' on the full-length (see also 'Standing On The Edge Of The Noise', on which he sounds bored out of his skull, perhaps reaching the level of disappointment felt by everyone else when concerning his more recent musical offerings).

Beyond opener 'Four Letter Word' (the intro is used for some football-focused advert, you probably thought it was an Arctic Monkeys track) the album sounds like it has been recorded for about £50, and £45 of this could be costed to the 'sh*tty f*cking reverb' department. Of course, in both its structure and production no post-21st century Gallagher release could be reviewed without a mention of The Beatles, so here we go; The Beatles.

Oasis...sorry, Beady Eye are a spent force; a trace of a trace of a trace of a trace of a trace of a band that were once the voice of a generation. A voice that has decomposed, yet sadly not silenced, after years, nay decades, of cheap watered down lagers and cheaper watered down drugs, spat out by a tracksuited demi-human that's acting like a freaking ham sandwich. Inevitably, it is also a voice that will be cackling the last laugh as this musical abortion reaches its nth hundred thousandth copy sold.

Is listening to Beady Eye's debut album akin to copping a worried seashell ear to Paul McCartney's self-tilted debut solo album back in 1970? Is it like trying to make sense of Lennon's inchoate doodlings with The Plastic Ono Band, George's karmic musings on All Things Must Pass, or even Ringo's comfy covers album Sentimental Journey?

Well naturally it is none of the above: the slow death of Oasis was inevitable, unimportant and rather tawdry. The demise of the Beatles was equally inevitable and tawdry but boy was it important. In fact some people have never got over it and chief among them is Liam Gallagher. Different Gear, Still Speeding (a title that will guarantee Liam an invite from Clarkson to talk Torque and turbine hum) is an evocation of the era when things were Fab in much the same way that everything Oasis did was an evocation of an era when things were fab.

It's a simple, uncomplicated world where sunlight streams in through the bay windows of decadent rock `star mansions, girls have pretty names, and The Beatles are the soundtrack to every waking hour. Therein was Oasis' brute charm but Beady Eye do usher in restraint and subtlety on this quietly impressive debut.

Just don't expect originality: there is a song called For Anyone which is most likely a reference to Macca's baleful 1966 ballad For No One and there is a song called Beatles and Stones which is not a reference to nineties band The House of Love but a homage to the actual Beatles and The Rolling Stones.

If grumpy old cynic Noel was the brains of Oasis, Liam was always the heart and soul and here the man who now boasts not just a great rock `n' roll voice but a nice line in designer bloke clothes, lets sensitivity become his calling card. Kill For a Dream hankers after a restful mind and on Wigwam, a vaguely psychedelic epic with glissandos of harps and Revolver style drumming, he sings about the "bottle taking another man's life" whereas ten years ago he was celebrating the joys of Bolivian marching powder and all night benders.

In fact when opener Four Letter Word bursts into life with a brass section and the words "sleepwalk away your life if that turns you on" it's fair to guess that all that jogging, fatherhood and yoga has given Gallagher something else to live for than ciggies and alcohol.

He still knows how to have fun though: Millionaire pivots on a nagging sitar motif and a throwaway lyric that affirms that yeah, yeah, yeah, money can buy you love; Bring The Light features nice trouncing barrelhouse piano a la The Faces, while The Roller kicks in with Instant Karma echoing vocals and a similarly sparse and spare riff to The Beatles' Getting Better.

Elsewhere, Wind up Dream hits a decent groove, For Anyone is a nice little acoustic ditty, all La's jangle and handclaps, and Three Ring Circus is a nifty little guitar pop song. The production is by the ever reliable and workmanlike Steve Lilywhite and even if the three singles already released from Different Gear . . . were all chart stiffs, Beady Eye deserve to be heard.

It won't change your life, your underwear or your haircut but there a faux charm and reassuring quality about Liam Gallagher's steadfast and insouciant self belief.

Beady Eye? The band Oasis could have been. Over to you Noel.

After Noel Gallagher finally quit Oasis in August 2009, who’d have guessed that the rest of the band would side with his younger brother? Liam, after all, was the liability, the loose cannon, whose chief contribution was an edginess which constantly destabilised the ship. Noel, the songwriter, who made the whole world sing (in the early days, at least), surely would have been the more reliable meal ticket.

From day one, however, Noel ran Oasis on a “captain and crew” basis, keeping his charges on a tight, Beatles-embossed leash. At crunch time, the hirelings whom Noel himself had gradually cherry-picked from British indie-rock’s upper echelons to replace the original line‑up, doubtless shared the unreliable Gallagher’s thirst for liberty and stuck by him instead.

So it was that Beady Eye formed, and ever since this debut has been awaited with a rare mixture of car-crash voyeurism and cautious optimism. Wouldn’t Liam make a twit of himself, without big brother’s guidance? But then, wasn’t it really him, the beautiful nutcase, who always set Oasis’s vital energy a‑crackling?

The good news is that, from its amusingly headlong title down, Different Gear, Still Speeding feels a good deal less lumpy than the last few Oasis albums. The teaser track, Bring the Light, is everything one might have hoped for from Beady Eye – a piano-pounding rush of vintage rock & roll, which sets the listener’s fevered brain fizzing with thoughts of Little Richard and the Velvet Underground, rather than the same old Beatles references.

In interviews, Liam, Gem Archer (guitarist; ex-Heavy Stereo), Andy Bell (guitarist/bassist; ex-Ride) and Chris Sharrock (drummer, ex-La’s) have talked excitedly about the joys of collaborative writing, and there is an all-pervasive vibe of freshness, upbeat melody and commitment. Gallagher, throughout, sings like a man possessed.

Aside from another full-blooded, filth-and-fury rocker, Standing on the Edge of the Noise, the highlights are Millionaire and For Anyone, each recalling the breezy, skiffly Merseybeat of Sharrock’s erstwhile accomplices, the La’s. These stand out, for the simple reason that there was seldom room for prettiness within the Oasis brand.

Elsewhere, though, it is, disappointingly, business as usual – particularly on Four Letter Word, the trundling opener, which was presumably put there so as not to frighten the horses and Oasis’s staunch fan base.

It doesn’t take long for Beatles nods to pile up: The Roller so resembles John Lennon’s Instant Karma, one can almost picture Liam with long hair and little round specs singing it. There’s even a song called Beatles and Stones, although, with merciful perversity, it rips off the Who’s My Generation.

Fans will trawl the lyrics for veiled messages to Noel – “Life’s too short not to forgive/ I’m here if you wanna call”, from Kill For a Dream, should set the message boards chattering – but there is enough here to suggest that Beady Eye might take on a life of its own, especially with live gigs lined-up this month.

For now, though, the nagging feeling is that Different Gear isn’t quite different enough.

Beady Eye: Different Gear, Still Speeding is out 1 March

Download this Bring the Light