STANDING ON THE SHOULDER OF GIANTS (Big Brother)

Change of producer and change of mood for long-awaited fourth album

Like a 43rd fade-out of 'Hey Jude', like last night's half-finished lager served up at breakfast, like another series of TFI Friday, another Oasis albm seems an extraneous proposition. They belonged to a Moment, a Moment of mid-nineties British populist euphoria, a wave of revived consensus similar to that which swept Blair to power (Harold Wilson to their Beatles). The Moment was always going to pass, however, depositing us back in our more common condition of grumpy disillusionment. Anybody who honestly though that Oasis were about to usher in a new cultural dawn has been dumped with the Travises and umpteenth Paul Weller albums they deserve.

So it's them again. After the disappointment of 'Be Here Now', which even Noel has had the grace to admit was distinctly brown in large patches, can this album be the one to shock the nation out of its subdued cynicism, jolt things back to life like a fresh line of Charlie, or is a stale dollop of sad, trad Dadrock?

The title seems wryly to reflect the critical judgment often delivered against Oasis - nicked a few Beatles riffs but too lacking in innovation to bear proper comparison with the Fab Four. And that's as true this time around as ever: 'Dear Prudence', 'Hey Jude', 'Get Back', 'Strawberry Fields', all are regurgitated in fleeting snatches. In fairness, they have tried to learn some new tricks. The opener, "F***in' In The Bushes", is driven by a rumbling, combatative backbeat reminiscent of DJ Shadow, a twangy, machine-gun riff and rapid-fire samples culled from the stage of the Isle of Wight Festival, including the organiser having a go at hippies tearing down the perimeter fences. "We worked for one year for you pigs..." It's fun but actually predictable in its "unpredictability", very Fatboy, very Chemicals.

With first single "Go Let It Out", we're back on more familiar, acoustic terrain - it's as if with the opener they were having fun while Paul Weller was out of the room and now he's come back in. A typically vague exhortation to live life in the full, "taste every potion", it's garnished with some DJ scratchin' which sits as comfortably on the track as silver trainers on a 40-year old man.

Having just advocated the ingestion of substances, Oasis promptly ascend to a more spiritual plane on "Who Feels Love?", tabla-drenched psychedelia by numbers during which Liam, assuming the lyrical lotus position, sings of how "my spirit has been purified" (well, he did knock off the lager for a while) and is forced to mouth, amid a flurrying sycophantic squalll of backwards guitar, some painfully Fotherington-Thomas style sentiments from Noel, such as, "Thankyou for the sun, The one that shines on everyone, Who feels love." Harrumph.

The nadir of the album, however, is reached with Liam's much-dreaded contribution, "Little James", which prompts the thought that a bill should be drafted for the next Parliament forbidding fathers to write songs about their offspring. Couched in homely,'Imagine'-style piano chords, it's gooey enough to elicit a cold shudder in a sauna. Like his older brother, Liam is fond of a good thank you. "Thank you for the smile, You make it all worthwhile to us," he beams, while celebrating the infant's propensity to play with his "plasticine and trampolene" and "Live for your toys, Even though they make noise." Somewhere, a playgroundful of hostile boys awaits poor little James. "I'm singing this song for you and your Mum," Liam warbles pointedly, as if we listeners are intruding on his family's privacy by listening in. So why inflict the damn thing on us, then?

After this, the ambient menace of "Gas Panic!", inspired by drug-induced anxiety attackes on Noel's part, sounds like quality stuff until, as with nearly every song here, it's eventaully buried beneath a barrage of too many scarf-waving choruses. There's a difference between momentum and mere repitition, y'know. "Where Did It All Go Wrong?" features Noel on vocals, and, by this point, the anti-trad adventurism of the opening track has been left far behind. "Do you keep the receipt, For the friends that you buy," sneers Noel, but by this time it may be that one or two punters are regretting not keeping the receipts for the Oasis albums they buy, especially when faced with "Sunday Morning Call", another acoustic-based, Noel-sung offering. This one is so lyrically trite and chockful of leary-eyed non-sequiturs it's almost Zen-like. "You need time, Cos our thoughts an words won't last forever more, And I'm not sure if it'll ever work out right, But its OK." No it isn't.

Standing On Ther Shoulder...isn't complete cack. Liam's sinfully raucous, cat's tongue rasp of a vocal is as physical a pleasure as ever, more so this time round. "Put Yer Money Where Yer Mouth Is" is a decent smoke-filled. blazing ruckus of fuzzbox rock, albeit of the apres-garde variety. It's a reminder that it's more reralistic to compare Oasis with Slade than The Beatles in the British rock Hall of Fame. Oasis would probably have bequeathed a more satisfying repertoire if they'd stuck to the less pretentious brief of being a great rock'n'roll band as opposed to beleieving that they produced "great songs". "I Can See A Liar" is quite powerful, too, and, like 'Money', is a veiled but caustic attack on some of the hangers-on Noel's attracted since he moved to Supernova Heights.

In fact, you can't help wondering if he shouldn't have written an entire album in this vituperative vein and ditched the "Riding so high, Like the sun in the sky, Yeah, yeah, yeah..."-type musings which still blight his songwriting. "Roll It Over", the last track, is also quite scathing in its disparagement of "plastic people", gossipy types (not Meg's chums, surely?) although lines like "Try to sit with me at my table, But never bring a chair" indicate that the rubber mallet rather than the rapier is Noel's weapon.Its arcing 'Dear Prudence'-style chorus is quite affecting, but once again it runs aground rather than takes off, complete with ludicrous Heavenly host choir and sweaty powerchords.

It was hard to see where Oasis were going to go with Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants, and predictably they've gone nowhere but a little further down, into the wet sand on which their castle has always been founded. Ideally, Noel and Liam should stop recording but be retained as celebrities for their own sake, like Chris Eubank or George Best, adding to the gaiety of this tabloid nation.

But then, that's an artistic judgment. Oasis haven't provided any artistic surprises. Where they will continue to surprise, I suspect, is their longevity. Their words and sentiments may be a weary blur but there are enough people out there to whom words are a blur in any case, who in a fragmented, de-centred, Internet-driven, digitally enhanced 21st century will continue to find in Oasis a rare but massive source of communal, trad two-bar warmth, of anthems, scarves and togetherness in an untogether world. This will do fine for them.

3 out of 5

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c 2000 Andrew Turner

aturner@interalpha.co.uk

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