Album
Liam Gallagher
As You Were
October 6 2017 (Warner Bros)
7/10
Words: Alison Mack
Taking his favourite three word phrase as the title to this debut solo album, Liam Gallagher shrugs off the calamity of Beady Eye to redeem himself by going for what he does best: swaggering melodics.
If you're one of those who thinks LG is a 'legend', you'll undoubtedly love this collection of big, stadium-sized songs, like lead single ‘Wall Of Glass’, complete with bluesy guitar solo; if on the other hand you subscribe to the school of thought that here is a middle-aged man still trying to recreate the Oasis glory days of his twenties, you might find the largely co-written (eight of the album’s 12 tracks) material, with producers like Andrew Wyatt (Miike Snow, Lorde) and Greg Kurstin (Adele, Foo Fighters), lacking in a certain spark of originality.
Melancholy songs ‘When I’m In Need’, the mellotron and acoustic guitar included 'Bold', and the poignant, acoustic folk track 'Paper Crown', show a more vulnerable face to the more antagonistic one we are used to, while the Beatles-essenced ballad 'For What It’s Worth', he lays out the statement that "all my intentions were good / And heaven holds a place for all the misunderstood.” And on 'Greedy Soul', it's not the driving guitars and pounding drums that intrigue so much as the lyrics: “You’re getting told / You greedy soul / You’ve been telling lies / You’re a slippery kind.” Perhaps a track by track breakdown by the man might have proved enlightening as to who this was directed at, or can we guess?
While 'As You Were’ fares better than most of what Beady Eye produced, it can't live up to Oasis, and it's unlikely anything on here will remain in people's memories 10 years on.
No comments:
Post a Comment