Gallaghers reward their loyal fans performance


Oasis fans aren't normal. Normal as people, undoubtedly - but not as music fans.

Oasis: crowd-pleasers

If any other band released three straight albums of misfiring mediocrity (as Oasis did with Be Here Now, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants and Heathen Chemistry), their followers would flee. Not so these. Like supporters of an ailing but proud football club, they stayed doggedly and defensively loyal throughout long seasons of mid-table disappointment.

This year, their faith has been rewarded: a decent album, Don't Believe The Truth, and top billing at Noise And Confusion, a new annual music event at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. "Event", you notice, rather than "festival": there's only one stage, it's held in a swanky sports arena rather than a godforsaken field, and the closest anyone is likely to get to a chemical thrill is by eating a hot dog. Essentially, it just feels like an Oasis gig.

One difference: superb support. After a handful of minor afternoon acts, on swaggered Razorlight. Just one album into their career, they looked already like stadium naturals. Not least because, strutting the stage topless and in troublingly tight white trousers, singer Johnny Borrell appeared only a moustache away from the son Freddie Mercury could never have.

His pigeon-chested posturing may have seemed cocky, but if you could lead 75,000 strangers in an a cappella chorus of a song you'd written (in his case, Golden Touch), you might turn into a preening superbrat, too. Borrell was an early member of the Libertines, and this was the kind of stage that band could have made their own, if only they'd had Borrell's discipline.

American rockers the Foo Fighters, remarkably, made Borrell look meek. Not in terms of self-confidence, but of sheer noise. The sound, however powerful, wafts serenely into the vacuum above - but this was as deafening as if we'd been crammed into a sticky basement.

At the centre of the storm raged frontman Dave Grohl, a blur of hair and teeth and shrieking, like a heavy metal version of the Warner Bros' Tasmanian Devil. Given the din, it's unlikely the ex-Nirvana star can have heard the crowd's reaction, so if you're reading, Dave: they loved it.

Ditto Oasis. The Gallagher brothers have never been heralded for their modesty, and it takes a special arrogance to follow a delighted roar of welcome with a song as dull as Turn up the Sun. But with old favourites such as Bring it on Down and Morning Glory, they soon hit their stride.

Actually, "stride" isn't always the word for Oasis. Too often, it's "trudge", given Noel Gallagher's peculiar fondness for treacle-slow ballads, and Wonderwall and Champagne Supernova plodded like tired old dogs wheezing their way to their baskets. But these were gloriously balanced by the rush of Cigarettes and Alcohol, Acquiesce and especially Mucky Fingers.

Their best recent song, it proves Noel Gallagher still has something magical - even if that magical something sounds uncannily like I'm Waiting for the Man by the Velvet Underground. Still, plenty for the faithful to shout about.

telegraph