Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – ‘Council Skies’ album review
This week, Noel Gallagher releases his new album, Council Skies. As its cover artwork – a roundabout in the modest Moss Side neighbourhood that marks the site of Manchester City FC’s former Maine Road ground – depicts, Gallagher has embarked on a regression session of sorts in Council Skies. “I was just reflecting on how I’d got to where I’d got to, and I had a lot of time to sit and think about it,” he said in a May interview with The Mancunion. “It’s a reflective album, more than anything”.
“When you eventually get to hear it, it’s very eclectic,” Gallagher added. “It’s not as far out as [2017’s] Who Built The Moon? but there’s a run of the first 6 or 7 songs, not one song that follows the other is the same stylistically.”
So, is this fourth studio LP of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds as eclectic as Gallagher claims? And more importantly, was it worth the six-year wait?
Noel’s assertion that Council Skies isn’t as “far out” as his previous album was a cause for mild concern approaching this new release, given that I admired the excursion Who Built the Moon? took from his usual style. Alas, Council Skies has countless merits, and as Gallagher professed, it benefits from a degree of eclecticism.
One thing Gallagher will always be identified by is the anthemic presence that popularised Oasis. The formula struck a chord in the mid-1990s, seeing the band into the new millennium through a sequence of dwindling albums. Gallagher has seldom escaped his anthemic approach over the years but has thankfully employed some intriguing textures to stifle any budding monotony in this new record.
Iconic raspy projection aside, Council Skies reaffirms Noel as the more technically gifted singer of the Gallagher brothers in its opening moments. ‘I’m Not Giving Up Tonight’ kicks off the album in style with rays of optimism before the more grounding intensity of ‘Pretty Boy’, the first of the album’s five previewing singles.
‘Pretty Boy’ has since been treated to a more gritty and enveloping remix by Robert Smith of The Cure. The track understandably has a place as one of the leading singles on the album, not least thanks to Johnny Marr’s involvement on guitars, but one can’t help feeling the verses are let down by the trite chorus: “You tell me that you want it, yeah-yeah/ You tell me that you need it, yeah-yeah/ You know you can’t have it, yeah-yeah/ So get your head down, pretty boy”.
As a nostalgic return to Gallagher’s humble pre-fame years, Council Skies can be forgiven for the ubiquity of acoustic-driven guitars. That said, the 11-track collection would elicit a few yawns were it not for the saving grace of some well-produced orchestral textures that add grandeur and character to some of the tracks.
The dramatic sentimentality orchestral strings give to tracks like ‘Open The Door, See What You Find’, ‘Council Skies’ and the gradually building beauty ‘Trying To Find A World That’s Been And Gone’, is firmly juxtaposed by the relief of more assertive rock tracks like ‘Easy Now’ and ‘There She Blows’.
Of the previewing singles, the electric ‘Easy Now’ and the ethereal ‘Dead To The World’ are the most absorbing and memorable. Later in the album, ‘There She Blows’ marks a non-single highlight, benefitting from the injection of grungey rhythm guitar and solos towards the close.
‘Love Is A Rich Man’ and the bonus track closer ‘We’re Gonna Get There In The End’ add a final dimension, attesting to the eclecticism Gallagher noted previously. We’ve had moody acoustic and more caustic rock-outs, but these tracks bring a crucial spring to Gallagher’s step as bold brass arrangements bookend the album with an echo of the opening song’s optimism.
Gallagher’s latest and most reflective journey was not made in vain. Council Skies is a considered and consummate follow-up to the more psychedelic and adventurous Who Built The Moon? This new record is by no means a work of innovative genius, nor was it intended to be. Gallagher has brought his fans back to the start with a well-structured, well-produced and well-sung discographic entry. Now he’s gone full circle, does an Oasis reunion await on the horizon?
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