The Oasis album Noel Gallagher called their “reinvention”
No rock band can be expected to play the same old tired schlock every time they make a record. There may be some acts that know their sound like the back of their hand and are more than willing to keep their fans satisfied, but it’s always more interesting to go with an idea and not be sure exactly where it’s going until everything is recorded. But whereas most bands see their work as a group effort half the time, the entire trajectory for a band like Oasis all began in the mind of Noel Gallagher.
Despite being one of the last members to join the group, Noel knew they needed a certain ex-factor to set them apart from the other British rock bands of the time. Everyone was still trying as hard as they could to be ironic to keep up with the alternative crowd half a world away, but you could tell that the Manchester legends meant every word they sang about when Definitely Maybe finally came out.
Right after Kurt Cobain was found dead that same year, this felt like a ray of sunshine over the entire rock scene. Everyone needed to get over the relentless gloom that came with the grunge movement, and since Cobain’s song had always centred around his own ailments and internal pain, hearing Liam Gallagher snarl his way through a song like ‘Live Forever’ was the perfect breath of fresh air.
Then again, no one should ever attempt to keep that hot streak forever. Noel was not about to slow down, though, and while What’s the Story Morning Glory was a massive success and has been heralded as a classic, there has been no greater division amongst a fanbase when it came to Be Here Now. Despite having some of their biggest hits from the time, the band were clearly not taking care of themselves, to the point where every song feels like the result of too much cocaine flying around the studio.
But it hardly mattered much to Noel. The band were at the top of the world and was treated in the same way that legendary acts like U2 were, but when someone spends that much time at the top, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants was always going to be a comedown. Noel had already lost half his band when making the record, but he knew he couldn’t spend the rest of his days chasing the same Britpop sound he had already done.
That kind of Beatles pastiche had become a lot more passe by the 2000s, and for Noel, the only way for him to carry on would be to completely restructure what the band were about, saying, “I wrote the first three Oasis albums all before I had a record deal. So I never had to sit down and reinvent the band until 2000’s Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, and I kind of took that too far. The band never needed reinventing, it was great as it was.”
That said, it’s not like the band released their version of Kid A or anything. A lot of the album fits in line with Oasis’s sound with a bit more of a psychedelic layer to it, but looking at the next few records they put out, Noel seemed to correct himself a bit too much. Heathen Chemistry was ended up leaning too hard into the stadium rock angle, and while Don’t Believe the Truth is the closest they ever came to their 1990s glory years, there were moments when they seemed to be trying a bit too hard to sound like their old selves, including a few shameless Beatles pastiches.
So while Oasis did find their feet throughout the 2000s up until their breakup, it would have been far more interesting had they continued down the road that Standing on the Shoulder of Giants started. They might not have become as psychedelic as someone like Animal Collective or Tame Impala, but their music would have definitely been considered ahead of the curve had they continued down that road for a few more albums.
