Will the Talented Gallagher Brother Please Stand Up

Since the break up of Oasis, both brothers Noel and Liam have put out new albums.  Let's take a look, dig into each one, and figure out who the real talent of the Gallagher family is.

Liam's band Beady Eye put out an album first, so we'll start there.

Beady Eye - Different Gear, Still Speeding (Feb. 28, 2011)

Liam is the little brother who sang for the band Oasis, while Noel wrote the songs.  Since he wasn't the one creating the music, it seemed like he had something to prove, and always wore the sneer of a kid who just shit in your pudding.  So when Oasis broke up, he took the rest of the band with him and formed Beady Eye, his chance to shit in Noel's pudding.

Different Gear, Still Speeding is a 13 song, 52 minute album, which would be great if it were packed with solid hooks and beautiful melodies, but it's not.  The album is filled with forgettable songs with vapid lyrics.

The first five songs drift by without standing out in any way.  Four Letter Word is clearly aimed at Noel, The Roller rips off the melody of Instant Karma, and Beatles and the Stones takes the cake.  He compares himself to the legacy of these two great bands, and waxes about how he'll be remembered and canonized like them once he's gone.  I know, I threw up a little also.

Things change once Bring the Light arrives.  It has some nice piano work, is actually a catchy song, but has one little problem.  It suffers from a McCartneyesque refusal to end.  Instead it drags on way past the point it should.  Look down there kids, you'll see Paul kicking a dead horse.  The same problem appears later in the album, when Wigwam tacks an unneeded 3 minutes on.

The album isn't all crap.  For Anyone, is actually a really catchy song, and one of only two songs on the album that I could actually say are good.  It's just too bad you have to slog through 20 minutes of mediocre music to get to this little glimmer of hope.  Sadly, it doesn't keep up, and it's almost another 20 minutes until we get to another good song.  The Beat Goes On, may be the best song on the album.  It's catchy with a nice little Farfisa bit in the background.

The problem with Different Gear, Still Speeding is that you have to dig through 45 minutes of shit to find these two little nuggets of gold.  It's not worth the money.  Catch these two songs on spotify without having to listen to the rest of the garbage the album is packed with.  If this is Oasis without Noel, he's better off without them.

Noel Gallagher - Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (Oct. 17, 2011)

Noel was the song generator and the backbone of Oasis, but now that he's left the group and jettisoned his hanger on brother, he has a chance to show us how good he really is.

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds is a 10 song, 42 minute album without any of the filler stuffed into Beady Eye's album.  High Flying Birds is packed with low key pop songs with catchy hooks, interesting imagery, and let's be honest, far better songwriting than little brother Liam could ever muster.

The album comes out of the gate strong with Everybody's on the Run and continues at top quality all the way through.  The second song, Dream On, could be a hit if it could ever reach the airwaves here in the states.  If I Had a Gun, is a somewhat love song, without the downfall of resorting to all of the cheesy metaphors that go with it.  The Death of You and Me is one of the better songs on the album, and clearly aimed at Liam.  Is he "the storm cloud sucking up my sun"?  It would seem so.

Four songs into this album, and the imagery becomes a clear thread of new starts, fresh outlooks, closing the door on the past, and distancing yourself or escaping from things that bring you down.  There's an optimism that runs through the songs, as if Noel's excited by the new path he's traveling down.

Aka ... Broken Arrow is a standout song, whose guitar work is balanced out by organ and what sounds like a theramin.  Stranded on the Wrong Beach follows with more images of falling, sinking, or drowning, and being on a journey into the unknown.

It's a shame that he didn't do most of the singing in Oasis.  He has a strong voice that's a lot clearer than the whining that seems to be Liam's trademark.  If people are expecting an Oasis style rocking album, they'll be disappointed, but if you appreciate a good pop song, then this album is for you.

Not many people know this, but Noel and Liam had an older brother who goes by the moniker of Gallagher, and is also a performer.  Gallagher left his home in Manchester to become a comedic sensation in the United States in the 70's and 80's.  He's known for his trademark newsboy cap, crazy skullett (bald mullett), and the large mallet that he uses to smash watermelons to the delight of people of all ages.  He became America's top comic for a time.

Sadly around the same time his younger brothers entered into the spotlight, the elder Gallagher was in decline.  People had grown tired of watching a grown man smash perfectly good watermelons.  But it was the allegations of racism and homophobia that eventually sidelined his career.

Now sadly living on the dole back in the house he grew up in Manchester, Gallagher feigns disinterest in the musical trajectory of his younger brothers.  When asked what he thinks, he just mumbles under his breathe, watching reruns of Are You Being Served while his watermelon mallet sits forlornly in the corner gathering dust.

Would You Believe - Billy Nicholls (1968)

There are a few albums worthy of being considered lost masterpieces, and this is definitely one of them.  Would You Believe was Recorded and released in 1968 as a British response to the Beach Boys Pet Sounds, but was shelved due to financial difficulties after an initial run of 100 copies.  What a shame.  If this record had been given the publicity it deserved, who knows what would've become of Billy Nicholls musical output.

From what I can find out about Billy Nicholls, when he was 16 George Harrison helped him record some demos and got them in the hands of people involved with and around The Beatles.  The Rolling Stones manager Andrew Oldham liked what he heard, started a new record label, and hired Nicholls as a staff song writer.  In 1968 Nicholls recorded Would You Believe with help from session players and members of The Small Faces.  After the album was neglected and forgotten, Billy remastered it in 1998 and released it on his own label Southwest Records.

The album is a gorgeous mix of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, Pet Sounds, and 60's baroque pop.  Many of the songs have strings, harpsichord, multipart harmonies, and brass.  There are no stinkers on the album, and it's a solid listen from beginning to end.

I was first drawn to the album a few years ago after listening to the title song on someones blog.  Its gorgeous harmonies resonate throughout the song. There's so much packed into the sound, new things stand out all of the time, including a playful banjo and tuba sequence.  Life is Short features sumptuous harpsichord and brass, while Feeling Easy has some beautiful plucked strings and orchestration behind it.  Daytime Girl sounds like something that would have fit perfectly on The Zombies Odyssey and Oracle, in fact, many of the songs seem like companions to that wonderful album.  London Social Degree is definitely influenced by Phil Spector and Brian Wilson; Girl From New York has a nice fuzzy, dirty guitar part that reminds me of The Byrds.  The album closes with the Chamber pop piece It Brings Me Down.

I've listened to this album so many times, and have still found something new in it every time.  If you are a fan of The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Zombies, or just 60's pop in general, do yourself a favor and give this album a chance.  I promise you won't regret it.  Find it here www.billynicholls.com or at Amazon.

Rome - Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi

I've been a huge fan of some of the recent Danger Mouse collaborations, and once I read what this album was about, my interest was piqued.

From what I understand, this album has been 5 years in the making.  Danger Mouse and Italian composer Daniele Luppi have both been inspired by the music of spaghetti westerns, and Ennio Morricone in particular, and wanted to try to do something similar.  Both men wrote the music, and then recorded it in Italy.  They were able to gather the choir and musicians, now mostly in their eighties, that had worked for Morricone on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to be their session musicians.  The outcome is fantastic.

This album is a tip of the hat to the beautiful film score work of Morricone without ever being derivative.  To listen to one song randomly from the whole, is to do yourself a disservice.  This is an album that needs to be internalized in its entirety.  There are nine instrumental songs, and six with singing.  Of the six, the vocal duties are split between Jack White and Norah Jones.  The singing on their own albums is so dissimilar, that before you hear the music, you'd never guess how well it actually works, and it does work.

The lyrics are filled with loneliness, lost dreams, a troubled world, and being your own worst enemy.  The tone matches the music so well, and it's so absorbing, that I've found myself lost inside of it, humming it to myself at work, and now have listened to the relatively short album (35 minutes) at least a dozen times already.

I'm a sucker for a good soundtrack, and even though there's no film to go along with the music, there might as well be for the images it evokes in the listener. 

Do yourself a favor and pick up this little gem: