In a landmark moment for Mancunian music, Liam Gallagher and John Squire have announced their previously teased collaboration, revealing they have recorded a whole album as a duo.
The ex-Oasis frontman and ex-Stone Roses guitarist – two of the most successful and acclaimed musicians to emerge from Manchester – have a longstanding connection. Squire played live with Oasis and later Gallagher on performances of the epic psychedelic ballad Champagne Supernova, and in 1997, Gallagher co-wrote a song with Squire called Love Me and Leave Me which was recorded by Squire’s band the Seahorses, who also supported Oasis on tour. But the new project marks the first time the pair have recorded music as a duo.
The album, its title and release date have not been fully announced, but press materials refer to a full record, and hint at live gigs for the pair.
The Guardian was given an early listen to the LP. With an appealingly raw, crunching and immediate production sound, the energised songs are at the heavy end of Britpop with stomping rhythms, burly riffs and poignant, brightly melodious top lines. Blues, garage and psych-rock are also major components, and unsurprisingly, the Beatles are a touchstone, namely the pop-psychedelia of their post-Revolver period. Though when asked about the rumoured duo’s album on X in October, without outright confirming it, Gallagher replied with typical swagger: “It’s the best record since Revolver … I’m being humble it pisses all over it.”
Another song title namechecks a freewheeling story by the American journalist-novelist Tom Wolfe, and the Squire-penned lyrics are quite spiky at times: “Make it up as you go along / Nobody knows any better than you ... thank you for your thoughts and prayers and fuck you too,” Gallagher sings at one point.
The first single, Just Another Rainbow – which somewhat evokes the Stone Roses’ Waterfall and has a funky, spirited solo from Squire – will be released on 5 January. Squire said the song is “about disappointment, and the sentiment is that you never get what you really want. But I don’t like to explain songs, I think that’s the privilege of the listener, it’s whatever you want it to be.”
Gallagher said of Squire: “Everyone always bangs on about him as a guitarist, but he’s a top songwriter too … It’s good to see him back writing songs, and fucking good ones. The melodies are mega and then the guitars are a given. But I think even when you take all the guitars off, you can play the songs all on acoustic and they’ll all still blow your mind.”
The pair initially collaborated remotely with Squire sending Gallagher song ideas and sharing reference points which reportedly included Jimi Hendrix, Sex Pistols, Faces, Bob Marley and the Bee Gees. Demos were worked up in Squire’s Macclesfield studio before full sessions in Los Angeles. Superproducer and pop songwriter Greg Kurstin plays bass, with Joey Waronker on drums – as well as playing with REM and Beck, Waronker is a supergroup veteran, having played in Atoms for Peace with Thom Yorke, Flea and others.
While the Seahorses found success with album Do It Yourself which reached No 2 in the UK and featured hit single Love is the Law, Squire remains best known for the Stone Roses, whose fusion of indie-pop, psychedelic rock and dance music made them a defining band in the early 90s Madchester scene. But the band broke up after just two albums, while the Seahorses recorded only one. Squire’s musical output has been intermittent since, as he chose to focus on visual art in recent years (he has collaborated on the Just Another Rainbow sleeve art). Though despite saying in 2009 there would “absolutely most definitely not” be a Stone Roses reunion, the band did reunite two years later. As well as playing live again, the band recorded another two songs in 2016, All for One and Beautiful Thing. Squire also released two solo albums, in 2002 and 2004.
Gallagher has consistently released music since his astonishingly successful run with Oasis, when he became the defining British rock frontman of the 1990s. After the band split in 2009, he formed the band Beady Eye before going solo and releasing three chart-topping studio albums. As well as the hinted-at gigs with Squire, next year he will tour UK arenas playing Oasis’s debut album Definitely Maybe in full.
The Stone Roses proved influential on Oasis, with Gallagher describing seeing the band aged 16 as “life-changing”. Four years later, Oasis recorded Definitely Maybe at the same studio complex that the Stone Roses were recording their second album Second Coming.
Gallagher and Squire are latest supergroup in a Mancunian music scene fond of all-star team-ups. The Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr collaborated with New Order frontman Bernard Sumner in the duo Electronic, who released three albums together between 1991 and 1999. Smiths and New Order bassists Andy Rourke and Peter Hook later teamed up with the Stone Roses bassist Mani in the supergroup Freebass, and Shaun Ryder and Bez of Happy Mondays have joined forces with former Oasis bassist Andy Bell (plus drummer Zak Starkey) on Mantra of the Cosmos, who performed at Glastonbury festival earlier this year and are planning to release an album.
