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