DEFINITELY MAYBE (Creation)

Whatever the Stone Roses are doing out in Wales, they might as well pack up and go home. Was their first album really that good? Does anyone really need a second? What was great was their buzz, their fuck-off arrogance in high places, the way that, at the time, only they mattered. Only someone with their head up their arse-end of Madchester wants the same again. Now is Oasis.

All year, Creation have promised us it would happen. Classic pop band. A real buzz live. Loads of attitude. They said these things about Adorable, too.

The auto-twatting Gallagher brothers and their Frankie-style three-other-lads have come from nowhere and in - what? - six mad months, fulfilled all those promises. They've brought back that excitement where hardly a week goes by without them putting out another cracking single, being brilliant on The Pops, or just roaming at large and going insane, bullying audiences, journos, hotel staff, hotel guests, everyone - even each other - into joining the sick, glittering circus of thuggishness around them.

And now they've gone the whole hog before you can even draw a breath to diss them. 'Definitely Maybe' is arguably the most fantastic, bottle swinging, swaggering racket you'll hear in '94, and probably for some while after. Of course, it nicks ideas left, right and center, but if you're going to do it, you might as well do it with some two-fingered gusto and take said influence to the cleaners. Like "Shakermaker's" theft of 'I'd Like to Teach The World To Sing'. If they're still alive, The New Seekers surely don't approve.

There are echoes of The Beatles all over the shop, desecrated and mashed up. The intro to "Bring It On Down" is the intro to The Only Ones' 'Another Girl Another Planet' with John Bonham on drums, bad and being loud. And the most depraved T-Rex riff charges "Cigarettes and Alcohol" - but more about that in a sec.

Judging from "Supersonic", Oasis' lyrics, which guitarist Noel writes and brother Liam sings, seemed to owe no small debt to Shaun Ryder - all that weird stuff about Elsa being into Alka-Seltzer, doing it with a doctor on a helicopter. Here, the full Gallagher couldn't-give-a-flying-one world-view hits you smack between the eyes. Life isn't necessarily sweet, but it is simple, if twisted with a sardonic scally surrealism that even goes back beyond the Mondays to John Lennon. The logic (like the music) is so direct like and primordial, you wonder when the last time was you heard a bunch of songs that actually spoke to you without having to sit down and work them out with the lyric sheet.

They're shot through with the take-it-or-leave-it deadpan sneer that's fixed on Liam's face onstage. Look, pal, whatever turns you on, you know, but we're up here, and you're not. If you really want to try it on, you know where this tambourine's going...

"Married With Children", the acoustic ditty which closes the album, is a hilarious stream of verbal addressed to the skeptics they've left back home on Manchester's dreary estates: "I hate the way you're so sarcastic/ And you're not very bright/ You think that everything you've done's fantastic/ Your music's shite, it keeps me up all night, up all night." Take that and party...

For all basic instincts, mind, there's a sense of possibility, a very real dream of empowerment. "Tonight, I'm a rock'n'roll star" goes the chorus for the opener, "Rock N Roll Star". Look at us! Believe, and it can be yours! Everything is about Manchester dreaming - "Slide Away"'s vision on escape, love, and happiness, "Up In The Sky" and "Live Forever"'s glorious E'd up rushed of shared invincibility. The whole album's a riotous celebration of the cheep thrills that pop culture affords, and it's littered with great pop moments. Barely a duff track ("Columbia" is probably the furthest from three-minute perfection) and, lest we forget, there's "Cigarettes and Alcohol". "Is it my imagin-ay-sheee-urn", Liam drawls with a stupidly funky inflection, "or I finally found something worth living for/ I was looking for some act-sheee-urn but all I found were cigarettes and alcohol." Drink beer. Smoke Tabs. It's all you need, he's saying, except maybe a good shag every now and then. "You've gotta make it happen", goes the anthemic, effortlessly '94 refrain. Don't get a job, just get your rocks off. Whatever squeezes your lemon, whatever cranks your wang. Do it. That's the message.

In a couple of weeks, "Live Forever" will put Oasis back in the Top 20. Then, the day after the Bank Holiday, you can get your hands on 'Definitely Maybe'. The next LP may well be more accomplished, and contain some of the best stuff about being a pop star since Ian Hunter, but with this debut, Oasis have practically made pop's here and now their own. The best band of '94, anyone? Definitely. No maybes.

5 out of 5

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c 2000 Andrew Turner

aturner@interalpha.co.uk

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