"BE HERE NOW" anmeldelse stjålet fra NMEs HJEMMESIDE !  :

... Here is where you find the huddled critics. Can't wait for the gigs, but itching to give 'Be Here Now' a kicking; to smear their byline in blood beneath a (5) or (oh, if dreams could only come true if we wanted them to!) a (2), if only to somehow redress the amazing - and therefore entirely unjust - imbalance between Oasis' record sales and those of anyone else who can play guitar; if only to eradicate that jaw-jutting Liam pose from our minds forever; if only to undermine the utterly ridiculous concept of having to sign a legal document before being 'privileged' to receive an advance cassette. It is to his eternal credit that Noel Gallagher has helped our cause tremendously. Because 'Be Here Now', the third Oasis album, is one of the daftest records ever made.

Like, on a scale of one to comical, this really is Terry Fuckwit climbing into the cage to stroke the furry tigers. It is tacky. It is grotesquely over-the-top. It features the same old guitar runs, the same old drawled lyrical doodlings, the same pub-tastic, pint-mungous rhythms... In fact, if there is a single plangent note in these 11 tracks that has never been heard before in the past 30 years of rock, I will eat my grandma's cat. And I haven't even got a grandma. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! This is The Great Rock'n'Roll Dwindle! Noel may have mixed it up with The Chemical Brothers not so long ago, but he's stubbornly neglected to bring any new electronica vibes along to 'Be Here Now'. This remains strictly whiter-than-white boy guitar territory, a funk-free zone, a cod-psychedelic festival of old-school sensibilities with another heaving sack of numblingly blatant Beatles references.

It's trad, dad - about as subtle as a Frenchie with Mike Tyson, and so utterly reliant on the same-old-same-old cheeky chirpy chappy Oasis formula you can scarcely believe they've even dared to release this record in the same decade as Radiohead, Prodigy, Spiritualized, et al, let alone the same sodding year. " And then? And then, halfway through the epic ablutions of 'All Around The World', you realise that every single hair on your arms and neck is standing erect. And you think, defiantly, but very, very quietly, "Bugger".

After the somewhat crummy statements of 'Champagne Supernova' (see the super-snooty declaration, "Where were you when we were getting high?") 'Be Here Now' is our open invitation to the Oasis party, a gilt-edged card saying, "Hey, you may have seen us having a laugh with Tony Blair on the front of your newspaper, and you might have have glanced at the crafty paparazzi photos of us hiding away in Mustique, but really we're just like you." Certainly, there is something about the Oasis work ethos which doesn't correlate in any way with their vast wealth. Consider the manner in which Manc mates the Stone Roses stumbled to a creative halt once they became millionaires, then cherish the fact that this is Oasis' third album release in four years. Consider the way in which 'Be Here Now' barrels along with scarcely a pause for breath and it's hard to believe that these are the very same people who've had so many family farragos, nay, public disasters since '(What's The Story) Morning Glory?' (cf, cancelled US tours, secret marriage ceremonies, band 'splits', the ubiquitous dribbling wibbling rivalries).

Fundamentally, 'Be Here Now' is colossal fun. Just as Blur have faded into a left-field Americana-derived haze, so Oasis have blithely carried on doing what they always have done. The only difference now is that their songs are louder, longer and a darned sight more expensive. 'D'You Know What I Mean?' is the starting point, with even more fiddly decorations added to the overall Embrace-style (Yes! Indeedy!) communal hoedown, but 'My Big Mouth' is the real rocking entrance, a bionic scuzz-rock skate-along and a half-shrugged apology (of sorts) for the guitarist's lager-fuelled series of public faux pas.

Thereafter, Noel takes over vocal duties for the lush rifferama of 'Magic Pie' (so soon after McCartney's 'Flaming Pie'? Shame on you, ya little Beatle-obsessed packed-lunch monkey!), which segues - via some jazz-club noodlings and a Python-esque studio shout of "Shut up!!" - straight into the swaggeringly lovely epic, 'Stand By Me', wherein Liam leers, "What's the matter with you?/Sing me something new". And so it goes, ripping off history here, careering down some lyrical cul-de-sac over there and directing all of their creative attentions towards the simpler, saucier things in life (see fast drugs, fast cars, extremely fast rock'n'roll) everywhere else.

Each time Noel comes up with a naff line - 'Be Here Now' is riddled with references to his lyrical frustrations, notably, "Damn my education/I can't find the words to say" - Liam's louche delivery transforms it from the mundane into the meaningful, if not the downright sodding mad. Every time Noel flips out one of those twiddly guitar riffs with the casually important air of the Queen's regal public handwave you think, 'Doh! Status QUO!!' until another ridiculous planet-cuddling chorus comes surfing around the corner. Lord, this album is fucking barmy... You want more choooons, like? 'The Girl In The Dirty Shirt' is a faintly hysterical skyburst of boogaloo piano and slide guitar, with the cute kiss-off line: "You can call me anytime you're seeing double/Now you know you're not on your own"; 'Fade In-Out' pretends to start like the Roses but in fact parodies the sound and pseudo-gritty spirit of 'New Jersey'-era Bon Jovi. It also features Johnny Depp on axe duties, not to mention one of the all-time great primal rock screams from Noel.

'Don't Go Away' is one of Noel's most explicit personal songs yet, mellower than its surroundings and an absolute rock classic in the sense that it sounds exactly like the sort of song a lonely, slightly weepy pop star would write on a plane halfway across the Atlantic; at the start of the title track you can detect the full-on authentic fuzz of amps and some clanking beat before there's a surge of 'Cigarettes & Alcohol'-style chord roughage and some top-level Noel cobblerspeak (see, "Please sit down, you're making me giddy"; and 'It's Getting Better (Man!!)' is pretty much... well, the same, really - Oasis by rockin' numbers. Admittedly, they're pretty fucking large numbers, but there you go.

Which leaves only the nine-minute freakout that is 'All Around The World' to contend with: to all intents and purposes, 'Hey Jude' on extremely lethal loved-up drugs, this is as overloaded with trash as a mantelpiece sagging beneath the weight of various lava lamps, straw donkeys and leaping dolphin matchstick holders, ie, a complete tack attack. It also features the most precious moment on the whole record, as Liam's brilliantly sneered, "Nyaaah, nyaaah, nyaaah!!" hollerings are succeeded by a sudden explosion of guitars. Then there's a whiplash of orchestration, a key change, and the entire roof-raising chorus again. Come the close of 'Be Here Now', 'All Around The World' is reprised with the aid of trumpets in their most showbiz-blasting, Last Night Of The Proms-type statement yet.

For all the big backdrops, the big entourage, the big spending and the very big mouths, Oasis are still looking after the smaller things in life - pressing the right musical buttons, playing the right chords, manufacturing the right middle eights. Individually, each song already resonates with the vast, communal spirit that has propelled them thus far; the sense that - put in its purest form - here are yet another 11 songs the slightly sozzled world will be bursting to sing. (8/10)"

Simon Williams