I couldn’t be more equivocal about Oasis reforming, because I am an Oasis agnostic. I’m neither a diehard fan: the kind of Weller-haired, Wallabee-shod “parka monkey”, as Noel Gallagher put it, for whom it’s an article of faith that they were the greatest band of their era and that British rock music has never seen anything remotely as exciting since. Nor am I the kind of implacable naysayer who will tell you, apparently in all seriousness, that their inherent musical conservatism and their penchant for the union jack somehow presaged Brexit. I think Oasis’s first two albums and the accompanying singles and B-sides were fantastic. Indeed, if anything, I think their debut Definitely Maybe sounds more potent now than it did in 1994.
Back then, it felt like a rush of sneering vocals, distorted guitars that were equal parts Slade and the Sex Pistols circa Never Mind the Bollocks and tunes that seemed undeniable and immediately familiar, sometimes because you did actually already know them. Now, I find it weirdly moving. The cocktail of oddly wistful, melancholy lyrics and melodies and the seething, barely contained frustration and aggression in their delivery sounds like a perfect evocation of a desire for escape, for something better than the circumstances in which the songs’ narrators find themselves, undercut by uncertainty: they sound like songs about loudly expressed big plans made by people unsure whether they have the wherewithal to pull them off. I also suspect a certain nostalgia has potentiated my view of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?’s epic closer Champagne Supernova. Nearly 30 years later, it sounds like the 90s equivalent of the rash of celebratory, elegiac songs that documented the waning of the glam rock era – Mott The Hoople’s Saturday Gigs, T Rex’s Teenage Dream, Slade’s How Does It Feel – which seems pretty exalted company to keep.
But of course, Definitely Maybe and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? are only part of the tale. If no one would ever claim it as a great album, there’s a certain perverse pleasure to be taken in 1997’s Be Here Now – its claustrophobic, clenched-jaw sound literally embodying the excesses of the Britpop era running horribly out of control – but thereafter Oasis usually sounded bloated and weary, as if struggling to locate whatever had made them special in the first place, usually without success. Something would very fitfully spark – as on 2002’s The Hindu Times or 2008’s Shock of the Lightning – but, for the most part Oasis’s output for the remainder of their career was a pretty joyless trudge.
When considering their reunion, it’s also worth noting that they were wildly variable live. Sometimes they were great, even unexpectedly so – well after their recorded output had gone off the boil, they played the Shepherd’s Bush Empire to celebrate their 10th anniversary, and sounded incredible, pugnacious and snarling, as if stung by the criticism that had begun to rain down on them and determined to prove they could still summon up the requisite belligerence. And sometimes they were appalling. There’s a certain comedic value in Liam Gallagher’s heroically pissed performance at Wembley stadium in July 2000 – you can find it on YouTube – although one suspects the joke would have worn thin after a while if you had paid for a ticket. The phoned-in headline set they played at Glastonbury in 2004 was just as disheartening.
So the reunion could go either way. Its commercial success is obviously assured – the Oasis faithful are very faithful indeed, as demonstrated by the fact that even their most lacklustre albums sold millions; moreover, the crowds at Liam’s biggest solo shows suggested that their ranks were bolstered by an audience who couldn’t remember Oasis first time around: their streaming figures suggest that, almost uniquely among their peers, their music has cut through to younger listeners. One suspects its artistic success depends on whether the Gallaghers think they have something to prove 30 years on, in an era when their influence on current British pop appears to be nil. Or whether they approach it cynically, as a cash-grab into which they’ve been corralled by circumstance – it can’t be a coincidence that Noel’s attitude to reforming seemed to soften in the wake of a divorce that allegedly cost him £20m – and that’s going to be so rapturously received that what they sound like is besides the point. On one level a sure thing, it’s also attended by a sense of uncertainty: you can’t be 100% sure what’s going to happen, which I suppose makes it worth seeing.
