That's awesome. Allmusic is always really honest and fair to Oasis.

You will be glad to know that the wonderful NME appear to be following the usual and being a set of clueless deaf gimps.
They have given the new album 5/10, which when you consider HC 8/10 in the same mag just shows what complete tools we're dealing with.

I'm afraid it appears to be true... those who are reporting it on the other forums are quite reliable

edit: I should be more clear.... the above sentence is 100% sarcastic with regards to the "reliability" of other forums -- I've read so much crap today.... first it was 6/10, then 5/10, now I'm hearing 8/10..... we wont know until we have a scan. Its been quite amusing over the past few minutes to see individuals over at inet going back over and editing their posts when the next hint of doubt arises

until i see a scan tonight or read it for my self tomorrow mornin in the newsagent i dont beleive it

someones havin a laugh... not that i care in the slightest what the nme have to say like

i get to review this album for a paper. i'm giving it 4.5/5. just fyi. unfotunately, it's only a college paper and in the middle of the summer. oh well.

My point exactly; they simply don't like the band and it shows. Too much politics with that magazine; not enough about music.

Planet Sound (UK Channel 4 tele text)

At last - Noel Gallagher's 'It's our best album since Definitely Maybe' claims have come true. Never mind from Oasis, there won't be many albums this confident by any band this year.

While the often powerful Heathen Chemistry is underrated, the trouble with recent Oasis albums is the toil shows all too clearly, laboured and blustery in their attempts to swagger.

Here whatever the real craft was, they finally relax. It's the first Oasis album in ages to make you smile.

The key song here is The Importance Of Being Idle. From the title on, it's Oasis realising they were always best when being, well, a bit daft.

It is variously music hall, flamenco and a marching band. It is definitely not I Can See A Liar or Magic Pie.

More extravagantly odd still is Mucky Fingers. Yes, it's like The Velvet Underground, but only in as much as T Rex begat Cigarettes and Alcohol as its piano is a bit like Jerry Lee Lewis covering Fit But You Know It.

With Noel having more fun writing songs than at any time since Morning Glory, Liam joins in with The Meaning Of Soul.

Roughly 25,000 times better than at Glastonbury, it lasts barely 90 seconds and curiously resembles Adam Ants 'Goody Two Shoes'. It's utterly fantastic.

Guess God Thinks I'm Abel is his most fully realised song yet, a lovely slice of country rock and only Love Like A Bomb - the album's sole stinker - shows signs of Lennon addiction

Oasis could release any old tat and still sell out stadiums in an instant. It's something they adress here; however much they mock Bloc Party, it's an album too vibrant to just appeal to ageing Britpoppers.

Part Of The Queue, a shuffling funk they've never attempted before, is sung by Noel as if his Definitely Maybe royalties depended on it. Let There Be Love will resound at any festival. One day Noel may say 'It's our best album since Don't Believe The Truth'

John Earls

8/10

thought id add this from a previous post so all the reviews are together

intersting that the only negativity im seeing is from the NME and rolling stone!! why does that not suprise me

yeah it got a the mag in front of me 6 / 10 !! id scan it in if me scanner was workin, although sayin that its probably not worth it they talk out of there arse in it

This is the ending paragraph from MusicOMH.com review:

Sorry if this is posted somehwere. Like I said it's the last paragraph of a positive review.

---------------------------------------------------------


It's worth remembering that it took The Beatles and The Stones six albums (Rubber Soul, Aftermath) to mature before they eventually came up with their big hitters (Revolver, Sgt Pepper, Beggars Banquet and Sticky fingers were yet to follow). A mature Oasis at the same stage claim two classic records, are off the drugs and have regained a stride which maybe, just maybe, will lead to something great once again.

While that time is not now, Oasis are back, still relevant and, in Liam's words, "still waiting for someone to take the torch."

That has to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever read (well, that isn't credited to someone from the NME anyway)

Here's the review from Total Guitar - June 2005.
Be warned: It ain't pretty.



Probably the worst review I've read so far, although the rating doesn't seem to match.

FIONA SHEPHERD (scotsman.com)


OASIS: DON'T BELIEVE THE TRUTH ***
BIG BROTHER, £12.99

WE ALL KNOW the deal surrounding the making of a new Oasis album by now. Noel Gallagher, with typical reckless candour, slags off his songs, his lyrics, brother Liam's songs, brother Liam's lyrics (or just brother Liam in general), the recording process and the studio tea-making facilities. Then, when the long drawn-out process of producing something which sounds exactly as you would expect it to sound - but less any songs to take to your heart - is nearing completion, the youngish curmudgeon is sufficiently satisfied with the sow's ear that he proclaims it the best album Oasis have made since What's the Story (Morning Glory). So as not to be accidentally caught in agreement with his brother, Liam proclaims it their best since Definitely Maybe. A nation sighs wearily.

For what it's worth, I agree with Noel on this occasion. While some things about Oasis will never change - Liam's rasping voice, their atrocious album titles, the lyrics groaning in warped platitudes, the artless pastiche of their elders and betters - there is at least an attempt to think outside the box here. Bassist Andy Bell and guitarist Gem Archer both undertake songwriting duties. Liam raises the level of his involvement, with three songs. So it's no longer the Noel show. There are even some songs which don't sound like Oasis at all - although, as we shall see, they sound suspiciously like other acts instead.

There is impetuous talk, that grasps at that information, of a "glorious rebirth" - let's not go crazy here. While the excitement which greeted their recent "club" tour (with its Scottish leg taking place in that well known sweaty nitespot, the Usher Hall) cannot be disregarded, this is still a pretty conservative album, already easily trounced this year for energy and tunes by any number of young shavers. There is no sense of Oasis returning to show the pretenders how it's done.

It didn't have to be this way. Don't Believe the Truth could have been very different. Initial sessions were conducted with electro-rock duo Death in Vegas at the production helm - Oasis are fans of their rather overrated rock/dance melange, and Liam has guested on one of their tracks. But those sessions were amicably scrapped, the feeling being that they were producing a great Death in Vegas album, rather than an Oasis album.

What are they so afraid of? Would it have been so earth-quakingly ominous to engage with a little bit of electronica? Kasabian manage it, and they're rubbish. If Stereophonics, of all reactionary bands, can rewrite their formula to produce their best album yet, surely Oasis can brook a shake-up. Instead, Don't Believe the Truth is more of a tentative toe in the water.

On the plus side, it takes a whole minute for the Oasis clunk factor to lumber into earshot. Up to that point, opening track Turn Up the Sun is speckled with possibility. Written by Bell, it has hippyish sentiments and jangling guitars and is delivered with a snarl by Gallagher Jr - whose inability to sing in any other way is rarely so exposed. There's Liam again, waddling contemptuously through the uninspired single Lyla. In an effort to create some sort of diverting mythology, Noel has claimed that Lyla is Sally's sister. You know - Sally, the cypher from the nonsensical Don't Look Back in Anger. Whatever next? Maybe a song with another girl's name in it on the next album. Go wild, Noel.

This he does, to an extent, on Mucky Fingers, the track which has caused the biggest stir in the run-up to release, with all sorts of praise for this new sonic direction. Let's be straight about this - Mucky Fingers sounds to me like a rip-off of The Velvet Underground's I'm Waiting For My Man sung in a Phoenix Nights working men's club style - with some Dylanesque harmonica at the end when Noel has no idea where else to take it. It is certainly Oasis doing something different, though, give them that.

Five tracks in, good things finally start happening. The Importance of Being Idle is one of the only songs here which knows where it's going from the start, and that is following The Kinks' path of fatalistic jauntiness. It has properly expressive vocals from Noel, too. Later, he offers more kitchen-sink lyricism in Part of the Queue, which twirls around with a blithe spirit like fellow Mancunian, Badly Drawn Boy.

Liam steps up with The Meaning of Soul. Despite the title, there is no metaphysical pondering, just a hectic sprint with an acoustic guitar which is over in about 90 seconds. He stays his hand on the reflective (relatively speaking) Guess God Thinks I'm Abel which has a pleasingly 1960s psychedelic folk flavour to it.

It's hard work, this business of writing decent songs, and Oasis can't keep up the momentum. Bell's Keep the Dream Alive steals its distorted guitar sounds from Tomorrow Never Knows, but the tune is dull. Archer's sole contribution, A Bell Will Ring, is just stock Oasis, so there's really no injection of fresh blood from the "new" boys. Which leaves Noel to provide the climax with token lighter-waving singalong Let There Be Love.

Judge for yourself how comfortable you might feel while hollering along to the line "who kicked a hole in the sky/ so the heavens could cry over me?" If you find yourself inordinately excited by as little as the clearing of Liam's throat, then this could be the mighty new Oasis anthem you've been waiting for. Sceptics, try not to spoil the fun - this album really is Oasis at their best in years, if that's any endorsement.