“What’s gonna happen here now,” says Noel Gallagher, stepping gafferly up to the microphone halfway through his set, exuding Mike Lynch energy, “is I’m gonna play you a couple more tunes you don’t give a s*** about, they’re for me. But if you stick around after that, woo, there’s gonna be a lot of very happy people in bucket hats…”
Could the gloves be coming off in the world’s most infamous sibling rivalry? After several years in the dramatic doldrums, reduced to a one-way caps-lock slanging match on Twitter, the latest season of Gallagher v Gallagher has picked up substantially. Cocky young battler Liam has become the surprise stadium-level success of the pair, by dint of playing a fair old whack of major Oasis hits in his solo sets (who knew?). Elder brother – and one-time guardian of Glastonbury from the scourge of hip-hop – Noel, meanwhile, continues his creative renaissance with the High Flying Birds, only kept from a Knebworth of his own by playing fair. His bursts of Oasis tunes have largely been songs he sang on record, packing sets with mid-paced acoustic led singalongs but lacking the punch of a “Supersonic” or “Rock’n’Roll Star”.
