As a man who is frequently accused of recycling riffs and being overly in thrall to rock history, Noel Gallagher may be offering a hostage to fortune in naming his imminent album Chasing Yesterday. The penny appears to have dropped vis-à-vis that particular own goal: “As soon as it [the title] went out, I hated it,” he has admitted.
Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, the post-Oasis project that he freely confesses is ‘basically me and whoever else is around’, are tonight previewing their second album in front of a select audience of invitees and ballot-winners. Going by this likable but essentially unremarkable show, it is profoundly unlikely to mark a radical musical left-turn from their eponymous debut.
More than 20 years into his career, Gallagher remains a frustrating conundrum. Seemingly able to pluck mercurial melodies from the air, he tethers them to workmanlike, pedestrian arrangements; a sharp and witty quote machine in interviews, he nevertheless dispenses lyrics that rarely rise above the cliched and prosaic.
It’s a huge shame, because he patently remains a prodigious songwriting talent. In the Heat of the Moment, the lead single from Chasing Yesterday, a bombastic anthem meticulously calibrated by this master craftsman to resound around the world’s arenas, can’t help but sound formidable when experienced at close quarters in a room over a pub. Yet his new songs are blatantly missives from his comfort zone. Gallagher’s bluff, no-bullshit persona seems to render him allergic to musical innovation or lyrical flights of fancy. Riverman is a mid-tempo bluesy plod; Lock All the Doors revisits a song he wrote for Oasis 23 years ago, and demonstrates that Gallagher’s muse tends not to be prone to quantum leaps. Far better is AKA … What a Life!, a euphoric number from the High Flying Birds’ debut whose quasi-rave beats and freewheeling urgency recall Let Forever Be, his 1999 collaboration with the Chemical Brothers. Recent single Ballad of the Mighty I is not, as he has claimed, one of the best songs he has ever written, but its chorus soars and its plaintive yearning rings true.
Gallagher’s mind is on the night’s other low-profile celebrity gig: “I’m not doing an encore because I’m going to see Prince, and he’s on in 10 minutes,” he grins before closing with Don’t Look Back in Anger, a nugget from an era when he defined the musical zeitgeist. For all of tonight’s dogged sweat and elbow grease, that feels a long, long time ago.
• At the Odyssey Arena, Belfast on 3 March. Tickets: 028-9073 9074. Venue website. Then touring.
