Playing to a sold-out Rosemont Horizon on Saturday, Oasis put on a full-bore demonstration of the sound that has swept Britain the last three years.
It’s a sound that has its shortcomings on record: lots of sluggish, midtempo beats and songs that tend to recycle riffs and choruses rather than developing them. Noel Gallagher has a knack for writing catchy melodies, but he has yet to learn how to vary them–or to write a middle-eight or “bridge” on a par with his heroes, the Beatles.
But these shortcomings in subtlety and refinement become strengths in a cement barn full of fans waving lighters, hoisting beers and singing along to every word: “And after all, you’re my Wonderwaaaaall!”
The bludgeoning beats of drummer Alan White sounded monstrous in the Horizon. For dramatic effect, the quintet actually seemed to play slower rather than faster, perhaps to allow more time for Noel Gallagher’s fuzz-guitar chords to ring out, swirl around the room and decay before he struck the next one. Or perhaps it was to give singer Liam Gallagher more room to spread syllables across the beat–a word like “imagination” becomes a nine-syllable blurt once the singer gets through rolling it around his sullen tongue.
Here is a band that does little or nothing on stage, so that each tiny gesture is magnified.
While bassist Paul McGuigan and guitarist Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs functioned as dutiful, unobtrusive sidemen, the Gallaghers engaged in stare-downs with the audience from beneath thick eyebrows.
Liam Gallagher strode pigeon-toed to the microphone, bent slightly at the knees and clasped his hands behind his back as though aiming his voice like a missile into the rafters.
When he sent his microphone flying with a slap of his right fist or tossed his tambourine, he exuded hoodlum menace.
Noel Gallagher, who writes the songs and plays all the guitar leads, added high harmonies and took over lead vocals during a mini-acoustic set. Noel’s voice isn’t as powerful as Liam’s, but it is sweeter and capable of conveying emotions–such as tendernes–that seem beyond his younger brother.
Noel produced the night’s first Bon Jovi moment with his ballad “Don’t Go Away,” but his version of the Jam’s “To Be Someone” and his own “Slide Away” were even more wistful and poignant.
The band bashed out cocky anthems like “Live Forever” and “Roll With It” while asking musical questions that encouraged the audience to join in: “Where were you when we were getting high?” “All my people right here, right now, d’ya know what I mean?”
In contrast, openers Cornershop built intoxicating mantras with a combination of sitars, tablas, synthesizers and percolating drumbeats–imagine if Ravi Shankar had been influenced by the Beatles instead of vice-versa.
The band’s stage presence was nil, but the sound was astral-Asian funkiness at its finest.
