“We didn’t have a clue”: The Oasis album Noel Gallagher thought shouldn’t exist
Most artists must deal with a handful of duds if they’ve been around long enough. Even if not all of them stung at the time, looking at the few failed attempts to switch things up tends to be like looking through old baby pictures for seasoned veterans of the genre. Although Noel Gallagher has normally said his piece about not being a fan of Oasis’ Be Here Now, he felt that one record in their catalogue should have never seen the light of day to begin with.
Because as much as Be Here Now failed at what it was trying to do, it’s hard not to see the mission behind everything. Yes, the album is chock full of some of the worst ideas that the band have ever had, but the ambition to become one of the best bands that the world has seen since The Beatles is on full display throughout, whether that’s the layers of guitar overdubs or hearing them indulge in the pure swagger of all nine minutes of ‘All Around the World’.
By the time they found their feet afterwards, though, even their later records held together as a cohesive unit. It was tragic that they didn’t have Bonehead in the mix to fill out the guitar sound, but hearing each album operate like a committee of songwriters coming together did make for some fine rock and roll on tracks like Liam’s ‘Songbird’ or Noel’s ‘The Importance of Being Idle’.
There is a weird dead zone where Standing on the Shoulder of Giants falls, though. At the dawn of the 2000s, Noel was only starting to come to grips with the mistake that he made, and looking through the entire record, it sounds like he’s trying his best to hold himself together as he also attempts to get sober for the first time.
Then again, it’s easy to hear the fatigue in the band’s playing on here, especially when looking at Liam’s feeble first attempt at songwriting, ‘Little James’, or Noel’s ‘I Can See a Liar’. Even though the B-sides are still great from this era, tracks like ‘One Way Road’ and ‘Let’s All Make Believe’ do still feel like the band is coming off the high of being superstars and realising that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
When revisiting many of the songs in the DVD commentary for the album Time Flies, Noel said that the band would have been better off if they never put the record out, saying, “I felt really uninspired at this point. We should never have made this album if I’m being honest. I think there’s some good stuff on it, ‘Go Let It Out’ is great. It was a time of treading water almost. We made an album because we didn’t have a clue what we were going to do.”
Despite Noel’s hesitancy, though, that confusion does make the record a unique experiment in the band’s catalogue. And since Heathen Chemistry could get way too meandering and too focused on the singles, there’s probably a Frankenstein version of that record and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants that would have made for another classic Oasis record.
Still, it’s nice to see their fourth official outing as a wild look into their state of mind. Because outside of proclaiming themselves as one of the best bands in the world, this was the first time that most of us got to see what a vulnerable version of Oasis looked like.
