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Album Review: 'As You Were' by Liam Gallagher

Marcel Thee (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Fri, December 15, 2017

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Album Review: 'As You Were' by Liam Gallagher ‘As You Were’ by Liam Gallagher (Warner Bros. Records/File)

O

n his debut solo album As You Were, former Oasis singer Liam Gallagher engages the most popular part of his past to commendable-but-flawed results.

Liam’s snappy curmudgeon-ish persona has given rise to some sort of a revival in the past few years, but the convenience that his cynically-funny Twitter posts and interviews bring makes it easy to forget how long it’s really been since he’s released anything urgently worthwhile. For all the good it tries to muster, As You Were is essentially an Oasis record hashed out by professionals.

Those old enough to witness the rise of Oasis in 1994 would have a clear perspective regarding the band’s legacy versus actual quality of output.

While their two first records were solid (almost) front-to-back, everything that came after quickly showed just how limiting lead-songwriter (and older brother of Liam) Noel Gallagher’s musical palette would eventually feel.

Definitely Maybe ( 1994 ) and (What’s The StoryMorning Glory? ( 1995 ) weren’t exactly records of explosive variety, but the homogeneity felt more like succinct effectiveness; and apart from the reality of the band’s catalogue still being just two albums long, that compact nuance was backed with immensely simple and catchy songwriting.

For all of us wondering why neither Noel nor Liam have released songs on par with “Wonderwall” or “Cast No Shadow” or even “Hello” since, it is useful to note that there are fewer of those and more songs like “Little by Little” and “Guess God Thinks I’m Abel” in their catalogue. Oasis survived on being a marketable two-album-wonder, if there ever was one.

At the time, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain had just died and grunge was still all the rage, but fans wanted a little less fatality and a little more swagger in their alternative rock; something that Oasis swiftly provided (best showcased through Oasis’ “Live Together,” which was a direct respond to Nirvana’s darkly-sarcastic “I Hate Myself and Want to Die”).

Everything that followed was either a shallow retread of self-parody or an unconvincing generic rock song. Sure, it’s obliging to not think of the formulaic records such as Standing on the Shoulder of Giants ( 2000 ) or Heathen Chemistry ( 2002 ) (not always a bad thing if you’re an amazing songwriter), but those post Morning Glory records are a major part of the Gallagher brothers’ artistry, for better or worse.

And here, on As You Were, Liam’s most committed record in a long while, it’s the songwriting in those later-period records that come to mind. They’re alt-rock in a box — catchy, immediately easy to sing along to, and rightly produced with the kind of generic anthem quality of modern rock records.

If it wasn’t for the sins of comparability, this wouldn’t feel like a step down. It’s also telling that a team of producers was needed to basically copy what Noel did singlehandedly in his less-golden years.

The one-two punch of openers “Wall of Glass” and “Bold” makes it clear that this is a record that has a clear perception of what it sets out to do. Like everything else here, they borrow the melodic sensibilities of Oasis liberally — that evocative sense of melancholy blanketed with knowing-bravado, the longing verses and triumphant choruses.

These are of course elements that were in turn borrowed from rock fore-bearers, The Beatles, T-Rex, and suchlike. In other words, they’re catchy as hell, as good as the few singles from those lesser albums or on par with the non-single tracks from Definitely and Morning Glory. This quality runs elsewhere.

“Greedy Soul” is chunky garage rock with dim wordplay (“She’s got a 666/ I got my crucifix/ She got a spinning head/ like seeing Grateful Dead”) which only works when sung by Liam Gallagher. That it’s got a strong chorus feels like a bonus.

Similarly, “I Get By,” is a chugging rocker that brings out some recognizable melodic sense within its walls of guitars. “Chinatown” is an acoustic number that mostly works, even with the lyrics “Cause happiness is still a warm gun.”

Like those later-day Oasis releases, however, the bad eventually outweighs the good. While a good dose of pure melodic rock feels refreshing here and there, As You Were succumbs to the kind of imbalance “Be Here Now” or even the pretty-OK swansong album “Dig Out Your Soul” did.

The track “Universal Gleam” is unconvincing spiritual-pondering backed with perfectly-soulless instrumentation — sounding even like a rip of one-time-nemesis Blur’s gospel-styled hit “Tender.” “You Better Run” has a cool 50s rock ‘n’ roll beat and some chest-pumping lyrics, but not much else, while “Come Back to Me” is a throwaway mid-tempo rocker with a lo-fi aesthetic and a tacked-on chorus.

“When I’m in Need” starts off like it could be one of those pleasant Beatles-esque ballads Oasis used to excel at. Unfortunately, it drudges into sleepy brit-pop territory, with its generic strummed acoustic guitars and lazily tacked-on Lennon-lite chorus.

It’s unlikely anyone was expecting As You Were to break any new ground. But there was a hopefulness that perhaps Liam, the epitome of cynicism and bitterness, might have arrived at something close to his glory days.

As it turns out, he’s kind of there, just not with the vigor that is, to be fair, impossible to recapture. There’s half a pretty-good Oasis record here, but that’s pretty much been par for the course for the last 15 years.

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