3/5
What’s This?
Chasing Yesterday is the second solo album from everybody’s favourite Gallagher brother, Mr Noel Gallagher. The former Oasis star hit the ground running following the break-up of the legendary Britpop outfit with his solid 2011 debut under his new Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds stage name, and Noel is looking to rediscover his mid-90s glories with this long-awaited self-produced collection.
And What’s It Like?
Gallagher’s renowned knack for penning a cracking melody is always evident on anything his name is associated with, and it is again here, but where he often comes in for a bit of stick by critics is for a failure to be more experimental. But thankfully Chasing Yesterday includes the traditional big choruses alongside dashes of jazz (‘The Right Stuff’), horns (‘The Mexican’), and sax solos (‘Riverman’) that suggests that Noel may be willing to venture even further outside his comfort zone on future releases.
What Are the Album’s Best Songs?
Despite hopes for experimentation from some quarters, it’s a song written in 1992, ‘Lock All The Doors’, that’s likely to give old Oasis fans the greatest thrill. The track swaggers as if it has been lifted directly off Definitely Maybe (or robbed from ‘Morning Glory), which is extremely pleasing to hear. ‘You Know We Can’t Go Back’ also harks back 20 years when Noel was knocking out classic tunes as B-sides! ‘Ballad Of The Mighty I’ may sound like a rehashing of his own ‘AKA… What A Life!’, but it’s such a good tune that you can’t blame him for having another stab at remodelling another epic out of the same clay.
Is There Is A Music Video?
Tracklisting
1. Riverman
2. In The Heat Of The Moment
3. The Girl With X – Ray Eyes
4. Lock All The Doors
5. The Dying Of The Light
6. The Right Stuff
7. While The Song Remains The Same
8. The Mexican
9. You know We Can’t Go Back
10. Ballad Of The Mighty I
Final Verdict
If you liked Noel’s debut High Flying Birds album, then you’ll like this. But maybe it’s time for Noel to let Amorphous Androgynous loose on his next LP?
Words by Peter Warne.
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