STANDING ON THE SHOULDER OF GIANTS (Big Brother)

Of course, you want it to be brilliant

You want it to be such a beautiful marriage of rock'n'roll attitude and no-nonsense tunesmithery that it unites the alternative nation for the first time in years. You want it to be such an utterly unstoppable comeback album that it renders the twin evils of S Club 7 and Fatboy Slim obsolete overnight and restores indie rock to its rightful place at the summit of the charts forever. Yup, you want it to be so stunning that you can't help but remember just how great Oasis used to be.

But, most of all, you want it to be like that so that you can forget. Forget all the tantrums, the drugs, the failure to break America and the untidy collapse of Creation. Erase from memory the dodgy haircuts, the unseemly despatching of original members, the directionless third album and the embarrassing missus-penned Sunday Times columns. Wipe those visions of class-traitor toadying to Tony Blair and roots-betraying schmoozing down the Met Bar from your mind and recall what made them so great in the first place. The music.

Yup, we want it, all right. Whether Oasis have still got it is another matter entirely. While the barrage of pre-publicity has been encouraging (Noel talking about modernising the Oasis sound, Liam fronting up to the world as ever), the actual musical evidence has been anything but.

Accordingly, the album actually starts with the sense of anti-climax we've come to expect at the end Of Oasis albums. "F***in' In bushes" is the nasty riff frenzy that Creation pre-released to the clubs (though if you've actually heard it played in one you're probably eligible for some sort of special prize) and, while it's heavy with the menace that The Stone Roses tried (and failed) to bring to "Second Coming", it bottles it by opting for samples, when Liam's trademark sneer might really have done it justice.

It's just the first of several doomed attempts to drag Oasis into the modern era. They make it as far as, ooh, about 1973. Because, for all the stabs at sampling, "funky" basslines and "psychedelic" sound effects, Oasis never sound less relevant than when trying to sound innovative. That's why the single "Go Let It Out", despite enjoying rotation that's not so much heavy as clinically obese (if you haven't heard it on the radio in the last half hour, you're eligible for a really special prize), steadfastly refuses to lodge itself in the memory: because it's too busy buggering about to actually let the melody stand out.

Same goes for what's scheduled to be the next single, "Who Feels Love?", Noel's vaguely dreary attempt at sounding like The Beta Band. That in itself is surely a bit like The Beatles having ti go at copying The Clint f***ing Boon Experience, but the complicated arrangement simply doesn't suit the simplicity of the song and not even Liam's rasping vocals can save it. Especially when he's singing all-too-appropriate lines like "Now you understand this is not the promised land they spoke of".

Wise words, Our Kid. Because it's at about this time that we're about to give up on the Gallaghers and rate 'Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants' a record as wilfully stubborn and just plain wrong as its title. But then something happens. Something called "Put Yer Money Where Mouth Is" - a classic bootboy stamp based on Liam's finest bearded banshee wall and a riff that sounds like it eats children for breakfast. As such, it's about as modern and forward-looking as Noddy Holder riding a penny farthing backwards, but it is, rest assured, the Oasis we fell in love with.

"Little James", however, is not. Liam's first ever stab at song-writing is a nice enough tune (if entirely derivative), but is marred by lyrics so inept you'd have thought they were written by a child rather than about one. I mean, "You swam the oceans like a child"? What, doing a half-arsed doggy paddle then getting tired offer two minutes and demanding an ice cream?

Fortunately, big bruv then comes to the rescue and the next three songs inject a much-needed sense of purpose into proceedings as we finally get a sense of what Oasis have been through lately. First "Gas Panic!" documents Noel's cocaine traumas with a great deal more panache than any of his recent interviews and comes up with a truly inventive soundtrack to boot. And then "Where Did It All Go Wrong?" and "Sunday Morning Call" - the two best songs on the album and, perversely, the two sung by Noel - dissect fame via heart-warming honesty and the sort of melodies that, frankly, no one else is capable of.

Inevitably, it's downhill from here, but not by much. "I Can See A Liar" features lyrics surely written only to prove that anything Liam can do, Noel con do worse, but also incorporates a monumental riff that may yet render AC/DC's imminent comeback redundant.

And then they leave us with "Roll It Over" - sadly not a version of the theme from the Clover margarine ads, but a touching, if slightly self-indulgent, meditation on where Oasis go from here.

"It doesn't make it all right," muses Liam, but, to be honest, that's what it does make 'Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants' - a good record that will neither destroy them nor reinstate them to their previous untouchable position. A record that probably confirms Oasis as the Rolling Stones of their generation rather than The BeatLes: a band capable of greatness, sure, but whose music is destined to be over-shadowed by the soAp opera that their lives have become. A record that's plenty good enough to make you remember, but not great enough to make you forget.

Not the record you want, in short. But still a record you should get.

Noel Gallagher on 'Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants'

TELL US ABOUT THE ALBUM...

"This is a small step to where we want to be with the next record - the next one will be a small step further to where we're going. We're going to try and get into the soul side of things. We did have one track which didn't go on called 'Revolution Song'. It was demoed two years ago and it's on out-and-out gospel song, but not in the sense that 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' by U2 is a gospel song. I think it's a really, really good song. We were going to have the full-on gospel choir singing it until f***ing Blur put out 'Tender' and then we went, 'F***ing bastards!' That'll have to wait for the next one. They always nick our ideas!"

YET THERE STILL SEEMS TO BE A SMATTERING OF HEAVENLY VOICES ON THE ALBUM...

"It's actually a Mellotron machine. It's an old original Sixties one that they used for the Abbey Road sessions and it's actually got a setting on it which is a school choir. You press one key and it's eight schoolboys round a mic going, 'Ahhhhhhh'. If you press, like, 12 keys, you just get this f***ing massive sound and we'd just layer it and layer it until you get this huge f***ing choir."

7 out of 10

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c 2000 Andrew Turner

aturner@interalpha.co.uk

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