Noel Gallagher is hardly renowned for his willingness to stand on the precipice and leap into the unknown. A songwriter happy to work well within his own limitations, he has embarked upon his solo career (don’t be fooled by the “High Flying Birds” shtick; this is a star-plus-hired-hands job) with due caution. Indeed, his new album conforms so precisely to the preconceived notion of what a solo Noel Gallagher album would sound like you half suspect the whole project may one day be outed as some conceptual prank.
Likewise, last night’s Edinburgh concert was entirely risk-free, with no hint of the hard-line stance Gallagher’s pal Paul Weller took after breaking up The Jam, turning his back on his most famous songs for close to a decade to focus exclusively on new horizons.
The crowd were somewhere north of 'up for it', particularly the man who tried to order a pint of lager at the ticket office
Instead, Gallagher and his low-key, well-drilled four-piece backing band divided the set pretty much half and half between songs from his first solo record and old Oasis material. It was often hard to see the join, which, depending on your point of view, was either rather depressing, or else testament to the fact that he can still knock out a decent tune with admirable ease.
He was astute enough to choose wisely from his back catalogue. Opening with a pointed rendition of “(It's Good) to be Free“, he also showed a willingness to move the furniture around a little. “Talk Tonight”, an early acoustic B-side and one of his loveliest songs, was given a full band makeover, while those heady 1990s anthems “Supersonic” and “Don‘t Look Back in Anger“ were gently deflated, played without the band with just acoustic guitar and soulful keyboard counterpoints.
The inference was clear: not only is solo Gallagher intent on downsizing (literally: the ornate Usher Hall is little more than a glorified front room compared to his previous stadium haunts) but, like them or loathe them, these hoary old Oasis standards are now folk songs, ingrained in the culture. He rather cleverly played them as such, strumming them without fanfare and letting the crowd do the heavy lifting on the choruses. “Wonderwall“, similarly stripped back, was handed over like a gift. It was rather touching in the way that watching a football crowd singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” can be touching, effortlessly catching those big, boozy, uncomplicated macho emotions with the musical equivalent of a butterfly net.
Gallagher may lack the experimental gene but he knows how to write tunes - well, choruses - that make absolute sense in this environment. The songs on the new album may sound like utterly ordinary, mid-tempo guitar workouts in their recorded incarnations, but some strange alchemy overtook them in concert. This turbo-boost came partly from the crowd, who were somewhere north of “up for it” long before the music started (particularly the man who tried to order a pint of lager at the ticket office). They knew every word to every new song (and when they didn't they just sang “sun-shiiiine”), the kind of dedication to duty which has already made the likes of “Everybody's on the Run” and "Dream On" surrogate Oasis anthems.
Meanwhile “What a Life”, a brooding drone with a little of the spooky roll of Fleetwood Mac’s “Big Love”, was one of the few songs that properly swaggered. Still, for every moment of uplift there was a “Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks”, which thought it was The Kinks but didn’t know the half of it, or a faceless “Broken Arrow”, limping along to the sound of its own inertia.
The most obvious criticism on a night of polished professionalism festooned with the odd thrill was one I suspect Gallagher might agree with. He’s a surprisingly strong singer but no front man. Hunched over his guitar in his white shirt and jeans, frowning into the microphone and muttering the occasional droll Mancism, he cut a distant figure. When the crowd started singing “NO-EL” he deadpanned: “Shit chant - not enough syllables.” At times this wry little fella seemed, frankly, less than overjoyed at the bellowing devotion displayed by his beery throng of acolytes.
He might one day be inspired to try a little harder to confound their expectations, but for now Gallagher is very carefully building his power base. In “What a Life” he sang that he wanted to “take that tiger outside for a ride”. A stirring sentiment, but on this evidence one that belongs not so much to the high-flying birds as cloud cuckoo land.
- Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds are on tour until 30 October
Watch the video for "The Death of You and Me"