Noel Gallagher's Who Built the Moon? is a concerted effort to arrest creative decline – review

Free-flowing: Noel Gallagher
Free-flowing: Noel Gallagher

It is an odd time to be an Oasis fan. The estranged Gallagher brothers, the central force of the most popular British rock band of our times, are both touting solo albums that emphasise very different aspects of their former union.

It’s like the battle of Britpop all over again, only this time, instead of Oasis v Blur, it is Oasis v Oasis. 

Last month, Liam’s solo debut, As You Were, went straight to number one. Created with a team of pop writers, it shamelessly mimicked both big brother Noel’s lusty, Beatles-influenced songwriting and Oasis’s beefy rock swagger.

Buoyed aloft on Liam’s sheer vocal charisma, the album evoked Oasis's Nineties glory days – but left the listener with the niggling impression that it was all perhaps a little too backwards looking. 

Now, here comes Noel with the most adventurous, free-flowing and forward facing album of his career. When I first heard the lead single Holy Mountain, I didn’t even realise it was by Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds – but I knew that I loved it.

A distorted glam rock stomp, it absolutely barrels along, packed with horns and topped off with a cheery tin whistle. “Get out of the doldrums, baby!” yells Noel on what could be a one-line manifesto for an album that sounds like a concerted effort to arrest creative decline.

Noel Gallagher
Noel Gallagher

His vocals fight for space in dense arrangements glittering with unexpected elements: shimmering synths; phased guitars.

Experimental producer David Holmes has facilitated a new spirit of openness in Noel, whose previous two solo albums suggested he was set on a predictable trajectory towards sturdy, worthy, retro rock.

Not that Who Built the Moon? could really be described as experimental. Noel’s songwriting remains indebted to the Beatles and the blues.

His lyrics are still cheerfully vague, favouring rhymes over logic, his mix of major and minor chords giving melodies a strange tension, forever balanced between melancholy and optimism. Filled out with atmospheric instrumentals, it is an album of feisty vignettes rather than anthems destined to be bellowed in stadiums.

Somewhere between this and Liam’s more straightforward record, you could locate an Oasis album that might have matched their very best. But since the two brothers seem irreconcilable, fans might as well enjoy their sibling rivalry. Right now, Liam seems to be in the commercial ascent. But Noel sounds as though he’s having more fun.

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