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Music Review | Oasis
Back With Snarls and the Singalong Hits

By JON CARAMANICA
Published: December 19, 2008
You may not be familiar with the music criticism of one Daniel Sullivan, of Pickering, Ontario, but it was he who offered the most withering assessment of Oasis this year. During a September concert by the band in Toronto, Mr. Sullivan found his way onstage and then, from behind, shoved and knocked over Noel Gallagher, one of the two rambunctious, often disagreeable brothers who form the band’s core.

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Times Topics: OasisOasis would finish the show, but Mr. Gallagher was hospitalized for several days, and the band canceled some tour dates, including what was to have been a relatively intimate show at Terminal 5 in New York City in September.

Even for Oasis, longtime troublemakers in Britain, this was an extreme response, never mind that the Gallaghers have styled themselves as the sort of louts more than ready to take on all comers. As public figures, the Gallagher brothers, Noel and Liam, need antagonists. Perhaps that’s because, as a band, Oasis has actually become quite temperate, as displayed during its sold-out show at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night.

As ever, the band was dour to watch. When he sang, Liam leaned up and into the microphone, left hip jutted out. When not singing, he’d smugly stare down the crowd as the rest of the band finished a song. Noel, several feet away, stared mostly down at his guitar.

But when the band explored its catalog there were frequent reminders of why unpleasantness has never held it back. “Wonderwall” and “Champagne Supernova” inspired boozy singalongs. “Lyla” was transfixing and refreshing, a primer on harmony, and on a rancorous “Cigarettes and Alcohol,” Liam came alive like a schoolboy at recess.

On the three occasions when Liam left the stage to let Noel take the lead, the band lightened considerably. With the sneering brother gone, Noel’s penchant for gentle, Beatle-esque melody — on “The Importance of Being Idle” and “The Masterplan” — was both calm and alluring. After one of these stretches Liam returned to the stage to announce, “My kids have just fell asleep,” and it was tough to tell if he meant it as a statement of affection or as a slight to his brother.

Oasis recently released “Dig Out Your Soul” (Big Brother/Reprise), its seventh album and one of its least inspiring. Apart from “Waiting for the Rapture,” which featured enthusiastic, rigorous drumming by Chris Sharrock, the new songs here, especially “Ain’t Got Nothin’ ” and “To Be Where There’s Life,” were limp, and the guitarist Gem Archer and the bass player Andy Bell looked visibly bored playing them.

Ego isn’t much of a musical cushion, after all — the band’s traditional closing cover of the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” was bloated — and as time passes, the Gallaghers risk becoming little more than the sum of their pot stirring. Noel, in particular, has had a pugnacious year, taking shots in the press at the young British band Kaiser Chiefs (fair enough), the unoriginality of the soul music producer Mark Ronson (less so), Coldplay (too easy) and Jay-Z’s headline appearance at the Glastonbury festival (shamefully retrograde).

But here it was Liam who couldn’t resist a little rabble-rousing. He pointed out a pair of men in the crowd wearing formal military attire and said, tauntingly, “Gay boys, yeah?” During “Supersonic,” in between verses, he barked back and forth with an audience member, accompanying his words with notably uncouth gestures. Even though it felt pro forma, he was itching for a fight, perhaps to give the show some meaning.