360 records from 2000: 87. Oasis - Standing on the shoulder of giants

87. Oasis: Standing on the shoulder of giants

Country: UK
Artist: Band
Career: recording since 1994
Language: English
Genre: Rock

Let it be known that this writer agrees that Oasis have made a great rock album. In 2000. It rocks so convincingly it could almost be an American record. And in the end, isn’t that what we want?
Let’s rewind: I was never a fan. In fact, there were few bands I was less a fan of. Maybe the Redhotchilipeppers and Guns’n’Roses. Their plodding Sex Pistols impressions, their little anthems, their terrible bass lines, their cardboard box production. It was a good thing they had all that charisma and swagger to make up for the music!

By the late late ‘90s camp Oasis was getting more and more isolated from reality – journalists started laughing at them not with them, band members all of a sudden developed inadequacy (how did they miss it for so long, you wonder), wives and girlfriends stayed just long enough to knit some baby clothes, drugs isolated them from their old friends, sobriety isolated them from their new friends. And here they were sitting in their mansions on the French Riviera on their golden thrones, pawing their housetrained tigers, unaware that time had passed them by.

Finally. Time to put that bubble to good use on some seriously deluded rock music. Some serious delusion is exactly what I needed from these guys. Obviously what they called inspiration wasn’t going to cut it, so they had to wait until reality became so grotesque there was no escaping it in their music.

All other band members duly banished from the studio, Noel went to work on these detailed, massive slabs of guitars and drums, lumbering along like the corpulent dinosaurs they had become. Some tracks growl and snarl like angry dinosaurs staking their territory, some tracks moan like dinosaurs with bleeding gashes in their side, defeated and thrown out of their territory. (I think I can pinpoint the exact moment they got bitten – it’s the painfully out of tune bridge on ‘Go let it out’, ‘Something something princes and kiiiiings’). Some tracks philosophise like dinosaurs pondering their nearing extinction. Then they growl and snarl some more.
Love it. Me and Oasis, it’s our little secret.

At its best: Who feels love, Gas panic!, Where did it all go wrong?, Roll it over