STANDING ON THE SHOULDER OF GIANTS (Big Brother)

Ooh, you are offal! But we like you.

Release of fourth studio outing follows acrimonious departure of founder member Bonehead and Guigsy, the demise of Creation Records and the birth of Noel's first child. The catalogue number reads RKID 001. Geddit?

Just after midnight on December 31, 1999, your correspondent quaffed down his champers and stepped out into the street, curious to witness any failing aeroplane parts, exploding electrical substations or Second Comings. Relief that all was calm and bright was quickly followed by an unexpected twinge of disappointment: call me an old apocalyptic, but I was secretly hoping that the next millennium might bring with it some surprises.

As a band who consistently captured, if not dictated, the Zeitgeist for the lost half of the'90s, it's perhaps fitting that Oasis have yet again managed to snaffle the spirit of the age. 'Definitely Maybe' was the sound of a generation high on its own hubris '(What's The Story) Morning Glory?' its more reflective follow-up, 'Be Here Now' the lacklustre, written-on-the-road third album. Two years in the making, 'Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants' has been touted as their great comeback, created in a new-found atmosphere of positivity and sobriety. Sadly, though, it offers no radical reinvention of the tried-and-tested Oasis rubric. You can't help thinking of the River of Fire which never really lit up.

Though the production is edgier, thanks to Mark 'Spike' Stent, sonic guru to Massive Attack and The Spice Girls, the promised departure into Chemicals-styled dance territory hasn't materialised. On first hearing the album seems to possess all the maladies that sank its predecessor: pedestrian rock tempos, over-long guitar solos, samey, nouveau-psychedelic rock songs, a lack of tonal variety, an absence of obvious hit singles.

The deflating sense of deja vu is further amplified by the proliferation of stuff you feel you've heard a hundred times before mostly, it must be said, in Oasis's own songs. If Liam isn't chewing his way tempting to blame the shortcomings of Standing on the turbulent circumstances of the last six months, only most of the album was already recorded by then. Which leads us to the uncomfortable conclusion that Noel's resolutely conservative approach to his craft is beginning to take its toll: where once his confidence in the obvious translated into refreshingly naive, deeply resonant folk anthems - "Supersonic", "Live Forever", "Wonderwall" - now it just comes across as evidence of his lack of creative ambition. And ditto his brazen 'borrowing' of other people's riffs.

This is never more obvious than in the numerous Beatles allusions that litter the album, from the Strawberry Fields-style Mellotron part and Lewis Carrollish affectations of "Go Let It Out!" ('Have you ever wondered why princes and kings...?', etc), to the George-in-'66 sitars and tablas of "Who Feels Love?". When Noel blatantly lifts the motif of 'Dear Prudenc'e for the bridge of the latter, you can't work out whether the joke's on you or on him. In either case, 'Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants' seems to confirm what we suspected all along: that Oasis don't want to be like the Fabs - innovative, experimental, state-of-the-art - they just want occasionally to sound like them.

Yet while initial impressions suggest we're merely going over old ground, there's still some classic scenery to take in; indeed, the more you hear the album, the more its melodies gnaw into the brain and the subtle complexities of its arrangements unfold (vibes, Hammond and, yup, bags of Mellotron enrich the sonic template). Noel plays bass on several tracks, adding a new fluidity and invention to the sound, noticeably on the single "Go Let It Out!", where a faraway Yellow Submarine voice - 'kick in the bass!" inaugurates a boomy low-end groove. More importantly, there are also signs that he may yet be capable of turning the experiences of the lost two years into great art. Take the soulful rocker "Where Did It All Go Wrong?", a genuinely touching account of losing the plot around the time of 'Be Here Now'. Sung by its composer, it's undoubtedly the album's highlight, showing uncharacteristic vulnerability ("Do you keep the receipts, for all the friends that you bought?") against a deeply melancholic Mod rock undertow.

"Sunday Morning Call", also sung by Noel, is similarly wistful, self-probing and convincing, another glimmer of what Gallagher's capable of amid the unremarkable metallic clatter of wired, Zeppy instrumentals (the opening "Fuckin' In The Bushes"), out-and-out Slade-inflected stompers ("Put Yer Money Where Yer Mouth Is", with backing vocals by P. P. Arnold) and monumental, lighters aloft stadium fare (the nervy "Gas Panic!" and bombastic closer "Roll It Over", which, it pains me to say, wouldn't be out of place on 1Occ's How Dare You!).

Perhaps the greatest surprise here is Liam's much-fanfared composing debut, "Little James", written for his stepson. If, as Elvis Costello once contended, 'rock lyricists are a race of pygmies", then Liam appears to be more vertically challenged than most ("You live for your toys/Even though they make noise', etc); yet somehow he manages to imbue the track with such ingenuous sincerity that, against all odds, it becomes curiously arresting in a skewed, Lennonesque nursery-rhyme kind of, way. The backing track, a chorus of gently-pumping Mellotron and 'Hey Jude' "nah-nahs' adds to the faintly surreal effect of floating in space, sometime back in '68.

Ultimately, if you can stomach the fact that 'Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants' - the title's a mistranscription of an lsaac Newton quote on a £2 coin, incidentally - is more of the same, then you'll find it to be a much better album than 'Be Here Now'. But take heed: such creative stasis can't prevail for long. Oasis's future is now a simple case of Darwinism; if they fail to adapt and progress with their new line-up, their days will be numbered.

Noel shouldn't be content to stand on the shoulders of giants; he ought to strive to be a giant himself.

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c 2000 Andrew Turner

aturner@interalpha.co.uk

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