The long twilight of Oasis is reaching its end, at least in Popular terms. The 00s took them from the kings of English rock to a drab fixture and finally a running joke, bigmouths promising a return to form which never comes. This is almost the last we’ll see of the Gallaghers. But little has changed, in their sound or their context, since “The Hindu Times” in 2002: the rut which was obvious then is now the most inescapable fact about them. And that’s how the fans like it. If you’re in the Oasis bubble, you might believe Noel Gallagher when he tells you “Lyla” is their poppiest song since “Roll With It”, or that it’s one for the kids pogo-ing down the front at the gigs. The consensus reality the rest of us inhabit hears a Stones song – “Street Fighting Man”, maybe – which nobody’s bothered to write more than an intro for.
Like “The Hindu Times”, “Lyla” does just enough work to avoid being dreadful. The band’s main weaknesses in their long decline are sparkless, repetitive songwriting; a bored singer; and leaden production. These all combine with their cast-iron adherence to the British Rock Canon – by this point they even have Ringo Starr’s kid on drums, a truly heroic commitment to the bit – to create the special experience that is a late Oasis song. But it’s rare, on the singles anyway, for the band to hit all these weak points at once. “Lyla” is a monotonous grind but Liam sounds more engaged with it than he did on “The Hindu Times”, and even if his vocal force is a very old trick by now, it pushes the song over the line into bearable. High praise!
But since – for now – there’s only one more of these to go, let’s try a thought experiment. Could things have been different? Is there a way in which a 2005-era Oasis track might be exciting, or interesting, or even “as good as ‘Dakota’ by The Stereophonics”? Noel kept promising a return to form – is there anything here to suggest he might have achieved one?
In songwriting terms, the band were clearly out of juice. Like Belle And Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch, Gallagher had turned his group into more of a songwriting democracy, with contributions from the ex- Hurricane #1 and Heavy Stereo members, and Liam’s own continued attempts. Maybe this was the price of peace in the group – nothing these men did before or since suggests it was a wise creative move, with the other writers drawing from the same parched trickle of influences as Noel. But then Noel had been complaining of burnout since 2000. Even so, the three singles from Don’t Believe The Truth are all, predictably, Noel Gallagher songs.
If the needed injection of fresh ideas wasn’t going to come from the songwriters, how about the producers? Here’s where you can spot a flicker of potential. The production on this album was originally scheduled to be handled by Death In Vegas, which is on its own the most interesting idea Oasis had had for several years. Death In Vegas’ electronic/rock crossover swapped out the messy hijinks of big beat for a moodier, leather-and-chrome vision indebted to proto-punk and underground films. Like the Chemical Brothers, they had pedigree working with rockers – Iggy Pop narrates “Aisha”, their best-known song; there’s an inevitable Gillespie spot on one LP. It wasn’t the most original of aesthetics – less Grand Royal, more a cult video round-up in Empire magazine – but it was a hell of a lot more coherent and interesting than what 00s Oasis were pushing.
More to the point, there was an actual example of what an Oasis song with DIV production might sound like – “Scorpio Rising”, the title track of the group’s 2002 album, with concepts via Kenneth Anger’s gay bike gang underground classic and vocals from one Liam Gallagher. “Scorpio Rising” is a curious proof of concept – it’s a reminder that for all DIV’s club roots a lot of the music they actually made was close to Oasis in sound anyway. But there’s a confidence in the mantric groove that’s born of making repetitive music by design, not because it keeps turning out that way. And while the song doesn’t make huge demands of Liam, it gives him more more trippy and interesting lyrics than his brother did, and he bites at them – his snarling about “paper dinosaurs” and “leather girls” and “psychic equalizer in my head” sounds more engaged than any Oasis single he’s been on since 1997.
But mostly it points towards the thing we keep coming back to with Oasis. What if, instead of the heirs to the Beatles or Faces or even Slade, instead of classic rock songwriters, instead of all the mythic bollocks Noel Gallagher allowed to accrete around them, they were exactly what they appeared to be on “Shakermaker”: an indie band with a caustic lead singer and a strong line in droning grooves? If Noel is going to keep writing songs like “Lyla”, grinding you through four minutes that sound like a busker airlifted into Wembley Stadium, why not get people on board who can lean into that repetition and inject it with a bit of menace? I’d like to imagine that was the thinking behind hiring Death In Vegas for the album. And while a whole LP of tunes like “Scorpio Rising” would wear out its welcome fast, it would still have more life to it than “Lyla” does.
Sadly, we return to reality. That didn’t happen. The DIV sessions petered out – Noel Gallagher blaming the band’s collective, faltering muse rather than their producers – and the salvageable tracks ended up getting re-recorded for Don’t Believe The Truth. “Lyla” wasn’t one of them, though there’s a lonely keyboard pulse in its production layers creating a ghost image of what might have been.
And the simple truth is that even in 2002, “Scorpio Rising” didn’t break the Top 10: the days of “Setting Sun” and Noel muscling the Chemical Brothers to Number One by association are long gone. The Death In Vegas/Liam track sounds like a slightly sleeker, Stooge-ier version of Oasis and it was still too far out for much of the band’s audience. There was never going to be a more interesting version of mid-00s Oasis because nobody involved – band or fans – had any incentive to want one.
Score: 3
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