CD: Beady Eye - Different Gear, Still Speeding

This isn't an awful album. It even starts really well. The opener, “Four Letter Word”, comes pounding in with the sort of jackbooted psychedelic rock attitude that Oasis always promised and so rarely delivered. Add a swooshy noise and it could almost be early Hawkwind, so fried-synapse rock'n'roll is it. Then comes “Millionaire”, which if you heard it blind you might accept as a lost track by The La's, so timelessly, northernly tuneful is it. But sadly, inevitably, comes “The Roller”, with all its excruciating Lennonisms leaking all over the place: a track that slams the face of creativity into the kerbstone again and again and again.

And there's the problem. For every decent tune (of which there are four on the album), there are three more tracks that are like watching something good from the past being beaten up and then waterboarded in front of its relatives. You can hear “Norwegian Wood” weeping uncontrollably, you can hear “Instant Karma” spitting blood and teeth, you can hear “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”... ah, you get the idea. Liam Gallagher isn't an awful rock star – he makes a noise with his larynx that in the right context can just about send a tingle down the spine, he can write a lyric that gets you going like a motivational seminar, and he strikes a mean pose on occasion to boot. But so do loads of other people, who also make albums with three or four good tunes on. So there you go. An album which, while horrifically bad at points, ultimately isn't that awful. Well done, Liam. Very well done. What a star.

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