Will Oasis release a new album?
So, it’s official. Oasis are back in business, with a number of UK and Ireland stadium dates confirmed for 2025 and a world tour in the works. A whole new generation will get to experience songs that defined an era three decades ago in the flesh for the first time. For millions already familiar with the Gallaghers in live performance, though, it’ll be the brotherly bond they were missing all these years, the same old faces. But what else is new with Oasis?
We already know we’re getting emotional renditions of ‘Live Forever’, wall-to-wall choruses of “So Sally can wait…” and we can put the ‘Champagne Supernova’ on ice. Do Burnage’s finest have something else up their sleeve, though? It’s definitely a maybe.
Noel Gallagher let it be known late last year that he’s got a sackful of new songs ready to go. “In the pandemic, there was nothing to do all day, so I just wrote songs,” he told The Sun. “There’s another two albums worth of material there.” That’s a line we’ve heard before from Gallagher, who’s not afraid of hyperbole when it comes to his own creative output. Yet it does suggest that he’s already got plenty of unrecorded tracks in his back pocket.
The songwriter was keen to bring his fresh material to the studio as soon as possible. “I’ve had to stop writing because I need to get these songs recorded and get them out there so I can write some more,” he said. He suggested he’d been booking some recording sessions for January this year. However, that was the last anybody heard of them. The next thing we hear, he is back on the road with his brother from the start of next summer.
It could be that he’s simply put his new tunes on the back burner until his next High Flying Birds recording session comes around, to prioritise the opportunity of an Oasis reunion. Perhaps he’s already got some recordings under his belt, which won’t see the light of day before he goes solo again. Nevertheless, we can’t help wondering whether Noel’s new material might now form the basis of the first Oasis studio album since 2008’s Dig Out Your Soul.
But would a new Oasis album work out?
If Noel really does have 20-odd songs knocking around, we could be in for a treat. After all, his brother Liam’s songwriting has vastly improved, too, during his post-Oasis years. Between them, they could give us a belated eight Oasis record that actually delivers.
It would be different, reflecting a band in its 50s and 15 years after a regular album and touring cycles together. Still, old Britpop rivals Blur have made different work to their advantage on their first reunion album, The Magic Whip, and even more so on their second, last year’s The Ballad of Darren. If anything, Blur’s new music has outshone the reunion tours that have gone with it.
Oasis has always been a very different beast from Blur, though, and the latter’s main songwriter, Damon Albarn, is Noel Gallagher’s creative opposite. Albarn never stands still musically, working in a state of continual reinvention. Gallagher, on the other hand, believes songcraft is an immalleable art and that songs are abstract forms existing outside of time and space, just waiting to be plucked out of the ether by him, “Bono or Chris Martin”.
Unfortunately, that means there’s a good chance that he’s already happened upon the best songs he’s ever going to capture on record. He’ll always have the ear for melody and harmony that sets him apart from almost any other rock artist alive today. Yet his talent has yielded increasingly diminishing returns over the past 25 years. And for all the creditable tracks Liam has penned as a solo artist, neither his nor his brother’s post-Oasis work can compare with the band at their best.
A new Oasis album would likely be more akin to a Libertines reunion release than Blur’s most recent efforts. The 2015 Libertines album Anthems for Doomed Youth is littered with reminders of a sublime yesteryear, yes. But chock-full of jaded, middle-aged mediocrity at the same time. Unreleased early Libs track ‘You’re My Waterloo’ towers above the rest, proving more than anything that they’re not what they used to be. And this year’s All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade was a further indicator that they’re looking back into the sun, when it’s long since set.
Many would urge Oasis to avoid treading that same well-worn path in lieu of their legacy, but they don’t need to. In the decade before their split, they built an entire back catalogue out of trying to do it all over again and repeatedly missing the mark. They still outsold pretty much any other band out there, packed out stadiums, and recorded the occasional late-era masterpiece to boot. And they’ll be more than happy to pick up where they left off.
Yet they might be better advised to follow the reunion release route of their heroes, the Stone Roses, rather than an entire album that never hits the heights, a couple of decent singles that refresh their classic sound while offering something contemporary and worthwhile. It’s not just about how many you have, Noel. It’s whether they stand up as Oasis songs.
