Your music's shite it keeps me Polling all night: OASIS (ILM artist poll 78) --- Voting open until Sunday August 21, 2016

At least some of the songs have okay cores, but either needed more time to work up better and less vague/generic lyrics, or just can't survive being six minutes long. Like, "Stand By Me," there's plenty there waiting to be made into a good song, but so much work left to be done. It's like they went straight from the first demo to larding it up in postproduction. "I Hope, I Think, I Know" is much closer to being done - has enough energy and punch to it that you almost don't notice that there's only one goddamn verse worth of lyrics. It might make my ballot on catchiness alone. It'd be better at three minutes than four and a half but, good riff, several different hooks, nice earnest performance from Liam.

making my way through the rest of the be here now b-sides right now. surprise, for the most part they're better than anything on the album. "the fame"! "flashbax"!

On "The Girl With The Dirty Shirt" now and it sort of encapsulates the bigger problem - this just isn't really a very catchy or interesting song. Everybody's throwing themselves into it as if it is, and there's plenty of extra stuff piled into the mix, but it doesn't even really sound very fun to play. God knows what point it's trying to make. "If you ever find yourself inside a bubble, you've gotta make your own way home / You can call me anytime you're seeing double, now you know you're not alone." What? So is this person making their own way, or are they not alone? A bubble? Huh?

'The Girl With The Dirty Shirt' is one of my least favourite Oasis 1994-1998 tracks, maybe even my least favourite. It's the only track on Be Here Now that I'd say I out-and-out hated.

Magic Pie sure torpedoes the momentum on this fucker.

standing on the shoulder of giants (infuriating title) is like, "ok, the last album was excessive, what if we scale back in arrangements and make them a little
more tasteful, but also what if we make every vocal melody a tuneless drone"

Yeah, this was the part where it was all over for me.

I hated the title, I hated the artwork, I hated the fact that they'd carried on even though all the original members had gone, I hated how utterly boring the new members they'd brought in were, I hated the majority of the songs - particularly pointless, tedious and unmoving ballads like 'Sunday Morning Call', I hated the way all the confidence had been sucked out of the band, I hated the fact that Noel was blatantly forcing himself to write and record songs even though he was completely uninspired. Everything just pointed to a "grab the cash while you can, fellas" type of situation.

But to be fair, by this point most of Oasis' so-called "Britpop peers" were also down the toilet, just in different ways.

I love She's Electric so much it almost makes me want to vote in this poll, but I'm not sure I can think of four other Oasis songs I like.

"And I need more time" part were a little more interesting the whole song would work better - as it is every verse sorta ends with "and I'll write more lyrics to this later."

― we're gonna live in spatula city (Doctor Casino), Friday, August 5, 2016 2:39 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like the way that "And I need more time" works as both "I need to spend more time with this amazing person" and also "I need more time before committing, because I'm an egotist", especially with the brutal "she's got one in the oven, but it's nothing to do with me" kiss-off. She's Electric is my favorite iteration of what Doctor Casino describes here:

They had this great mix of braggadocio and desperate need when they were still on the rise, very hard to sustain that once you've hit the top (and once you're on the decline even)

and the solipsism that the braggadocio and desperate need entail, but but only with the dream of "making it" applied to a romantic relationship rather than becoming a rock star or whatever. The jaunty but bittersweet feel also reminds me of Squeeze, who I always associate with Blur more than Oasis, so maybe it's Oasis' most Blur-like song.

Whereas Blur's most Oasis-like song was "She's so high" there you go I said it.

It's true! Particularly the chord progression, although not even Gallagher would be that lyrically lazy.

I'd always though that the "she" in "she's got one in the oven, but it's nothing to do with me" was the same "she" who is electric i.e. that the songs protagonist is going out with this girl he's infatuated with, but then denies responsibility and dumps her after getting her pregnant, because he's basically a solipsist. but I just looked up the lyrics to She's Electric on genius and someone has annotated it with this Noel quote:

It’s about a boy who’s got a girlfriend, and he used to go out with her sister, that he fancies her mother, doesn’t get on with her brother, and, as somebody gets her cousin pregnant, and everybody thinks it was him, because he’s a bit of a f—in' run c—, but it wasn’t.

so maybe I've misunderstood?

the blurriest oasis song is surely "underneath the sky"

standing feels less like a sober album to me than one recorded after a considerable withdrawal, brain too scraped out and droning to put together anything but the dullest thoughts

the album only starts to get interesting when it's almost over, during "roll it over," though the stolen beatles guitar licks feel pretty cynical at this point in their career

hey, this is great! it was on the "sunday morning call" single

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-2dG_Kwn8E

I always felt that the criticisms of Oasis "ripping off The Beatles", on the whole, were overstated, particularly on the first three albums. Although, by the time of Standing... they're putting in those 'Come Together' licks into 'Roll It Over' and have the 'Strawberry Fields Forever' flute sound on 'Go Let It Out' ... but on the first three albums I mostly hear influences that aren't The Beatles.

But yeah, I think you're OTM about the album being the product of someone whose mind wasn't really on the job.

i think they got called "beatle-esque" in the u.s. bcz of their hair liam's glasses

their hair + liam's glasses

Was surprised to learn that neither Gallagher bro is on the cover of Morning Glory

As a kid, I didn't know what the phrase "one in the oven" meant, so I thought the song was saying that she's burning on of her dozen cousins in the oven and the lead singer doesn't want to have anything to do with it.

aaaahahahahahhaha

I thought it was "She's got one in the other," a very odd way of describing an incestual relationship among the cousins.

Was surprised to learn that neither Gallagher bro is on the cover of Morning Glory

― Οὖτις, Sunday, August 7, 2016 2:15 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Producer Owen Morris is on there, holding the master tapes of the album, but he's not one of the two guys in the foreground.

It's hard to choose a favourite of all the sleeves that Microdot/Brian Cannon did for Oasis, and I always liked how all the single and album sleeves had a visual continuity to them, which was lost when they stopped using him after the Be Here Now era... I guess it helps to distinguish the good Oasis releases from the shit ones, though.

Yes, they were very well served by their graphics. Hard to imagine their brand being well served by a more rudimentary / d i y style.

Suede had (still have) a similar continuity to their artwork.
Blur, too, had those distinctive Stylorouge sleeves, but stopped using 'em after Blur

the popmatters oasis b-sides list is topped by the two b-sides to "the hindu times." i was like, "can they really be that good?" and the answer is "yeah they're pretty nice!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atWQMzDerA4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbL-zl0s6-k

I'm not a fan of either, fwiw... for different reasons.

jesus magic pie is fucking cat

cat?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMXQqoHAWmo

cat = catastrophic

it's great though

I broke out my singles and see that I have 17 of them.

Stop crying... was the last one I bought.

Re: Turrican's points on Beatles-yness - I dunno, I think it's a pretty big part of their thing, even on the first few albums. (Later, it's just oozing out of things like "Just Getting Older," which I'm now listening to for the first time - I mean, that drum fill at 1:17 even.) Obviously there are all the obvious things - "it's all too much for me to take," "in my yellow submarine," the "Imagine" lift on DLBIA, the titles of "Wonderwall" and Be Here Now, "tomorrow never knows..." etc. I don't find most of these distracting but it is an unusual density of references to one specific band.

But I think it's there in aspects of their sound - especially the backing vocals early on. Those big "aaahhhhhhs" on "Supersonic" and "Shakermaker" are super-Beatlesy to me. There's other bits and pieces that you could have swapped onto an Elephant 6 record without anybody noticing. "Up In The Sky" is louder and fuzzier than anything the Beatles would have done, but at its core, built around that wiry mod riff, it's a "Paperback Writer" kind of thing.

Brimstead is right that the glasses and shag haircuts also played a role though. For a minute when I first found out about them I convinced myself they had to sound something like Elton John, based on seeing my mom's copy of this around the house:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41DJJ8BD1PL.jpg

Yeah, could insert that into an Oasis lineup and nobody'd be any the wiser..

I always felt that the criticisms of Oasis "ripping off The Beatles", on the whole, were overstated, particularly on the first three albums.

"ripping off" =/= "being influenced by"

Loads of bands were influenced by The Beatles, including Oasis, and most of 'em didn't cop the level of flak that Oasis got for having a Beatles influence either. Yes, I do think it's there in the sound of the early albums, but people bang on about it as if Oasis were copping entire Beatles songs and passing them off as their own, which is why I say the criticisms are overstated.

Apart from a few seconds at the end of 'She's Electric' and the intro to 'Don't Look Back In Anger' (which was put in deliberately and doesn't repeat anywhere else in the song) and the piccolo trumpets on 'All Around The World (Reprise)', I can't think of much that's a direct lift... and those things always came across as "tributes" to me, anyway. All the other references are lyrical, or in the titles.

I always felt that Noel's real musical passion was for early '70s glam rock, hence the blatant steals from T-Rex and Glitter and why their version of 'Cum On Feel The Noize' is the most convincing cover version they ever did.

totally agree - their sound is way more Chinnichap than the Beatles.

although you left out one direct lift (the horn line in "Round Are Way" = the horn line from "Good Day Sunshine")

er Got to get you into my life? one of those

Blatant lifts from: Orange Crush, Waiting for the man, Uptight, How sweet to be an idiot, and so on.

unfamiliar with those entries in the Beatles catalog

Oh, and the end of "With a little help from my friends" went into "She's electric", there I filled it in.

Xpost yeh, what I'm saying is that the Beatles were an influence, but direct lifts mostly came from other places. Like, hundreds. OK, maybe not hundreds, but.

Finished my BHN and Standing... re-listens while cleaning the house today. Sadly they're both a little worse than I remembered - BHN kind of in exactly the ways I'd remembered, but so much more of it. In particular, "It's Getting Better (Man!!)" is probably going to drop off my ballot; it's got a great hook and some really energetic playing, but it's seven minutes long and I don't think it introduces one actually new element after the three-minute mark. Maybe there's an extra backing vocal with Noel going "Yeahhh!" or something but that's really it. "All Around The World" bears the brunt of the criticism of the excess but idk, I might keep that one in my list since it sort of stands in for this whole enterprise while being slightly hookier. "Be Here Now" is okay but again - does this kind of lightweight "silly song" need to be the kind of thing where a whole verse repeats just to make space between guitar breaks? "Magic Pie" is indeed dire though less irritating somehow just because it's at least more sonically different from the rest of the album. In general I don't much enjoy Noel in ballad mode ("Talk Tonight" is one of my least favorite cuts from the 'classic' period) and this, again, doesn't have enough to say to justify its length.

Standing on the other hand is a little more varied than I remember, and refreshingly cleaned-up versus the simmering dross of BHN, but the average song quality is lower if anything. The tracks I liked in 2000 I still like, even if "Go Let It Out" wears its influences a little too cheekily (and "Who Feels Love," actually a pretty good tune, wears them so hard it seems like the kind of thing they should have given away, Lennon/McCartney-style, to Kula Shaker). The appropriately-titled "Where Did It All Go Wrong" is a true generic rock mediocrity. "Sunday Morning Call" and "Little James" are awful - much, much more boring than I remember. I think I must have just gotten in the habit of skipping them every time. Basically, if you trim it down, there's an EP's worth of competent material that you could have swapped onto Be Here Now to improve it considerably. In fact, I'm just now realizing that I made exactly that mix CD, sharpie-labeled Be On The Shoulder of Giants (ugh).... though it didn't get too many spins as later that year I went off to college, discovered indie rock, and never looked back.

But in the spirit of the poll I will say that "Go Let It Out," "Who Feels Love?" "Gas Panic!" "I Can See A Liar" and "Roll It Over" are all, tbh, pretty decent even if none of them seem like all-time Oasis classics, and only the last, by running back to "Champagne Supernova," seems like an Oasis song.

Now back for another pass through The Masterplan. God, "Going Nowhere"! Amazing. Like Belle & Sebastian if they'd been a completely different band. If you put this and "Supersonic" side by side you have almost everything that's actually special about Oasis, certainly almost everything I want out of them. And yeah I don't think I've raved about "Supersonic" yet on this thread but boy is it awesome, it keeps getting stuck in my head but it's really fun, so forceful, so pleased with its own juvenile aggression and rock machismo. It sells the hell out of lines that on a later album would just sit there calling attention to their own dumbness (doctor / helicopter rhyme in particular) and then others are kind of perfectly dumb, as carried by Liam's echoed sneer. The second verse is probably the best line delivery of his career, and then yeah, those great background vocals... great fucking song.

whoah never listened to that before, I guess they did have good songs after 1996..?!