Absolute nothing wrong with production of the album , it’s spot on ,it’s Noel doing noel with a fresh twist . There’s a lot going on the songs it’s hard to compress mix and get a master on them to suit . The cd sounds brill

Mark "Spike" Stent for producer of Noel's fifth HCB album

The key to this album is to sing the songs out loud to yourself. It was written alone in lockdown, so smaller moments matter. The subtle melodies suddenly become bigger, sadder, and more hopeful.

A couple listens through and here are my general thoughts:

I'm Not Giving Up Tonight: The verses remind me a lot of U2's Babyface off "Zooropa." Fantastic strings on here (maybe the best strings track on the album) and the gospel choir in the chorus, of course, also gives hints of U2. It's probably my favorite opening to a Noel solo album.

Pretty Boy: I still think there's a great song lurking in here. You can faintly hear some of the textures and colors Noel is playing with. The problem is he's not a good enough producer to pull this one off. There's a version of this that's significantly better with a trained ear.

Dead to World: A tremendous triumph for Noel. A heartfelt ballad that's up there with the best stuff he's ever done in his solo career.

Open the Door, See What You Find: I keep seeing people say there aren't any skippable tracks on this album. When this by the numbers song exists, I don't see how that can be true.

Trying to Find a World That's Been and Gone: Part 1: Simple, heartfelt and gorgeous. One of my favorite songs on the album. It's the rare recent occasion where an earnest Noel doesn't sound contrived.

Easy Now: There are parts to this song that I like, but I still think it's far too long. The turn toward epicness that it tries to win over in the waning minute sounds forced because it's only undulating in its mood, rather than adding richer melodic layers on top of what's already a strong melodic base.

Council Skies: Every time the opening riff and percussions come o, I think this is going to be a far more adventurous song than what it ultimately turns out to be. Not bad, but too safe.

There She Blows!: I love this song. A perfect spin on Noel's prototypical sound that often reminds me of any number of songs from the Beach Boy's album "Surfs Up."

Love Is a Rich Man: This song just feels incomplete, for lack of a better term. The "I Am the Resurrection" drums and the mouth organ (another Beach Boys ism) provide a spirited backing track. But I'm not really a fan of Noel's vocal, which unnecessarily brings down the mood of what's supposed to be a jaunty track.

Think of a Number: Big, bold, layered and really modern in its approach. A unique, daring closer to the album that relies on Noel's melodic gifts. Love it.

Overall a strong record that could be fantastic with a firmer producing hand. It's really amazing that he's still producing music this sturdy this late into his career. You really feel like every album we get like this is sort of a gift. You have to enjoy it.

Apple Music track by track (on the description for council skies): 



“I’m Not Giving Up Tonight”
“‘I’m Not Giving Up Tonight’ started as a track on Who Built the Moon? called ‘Daisies’ that never went anywhere. It was a bit more electronic and French but I always liked that chord progression. I hammered away at that song for months and months and months and nothing happened. Then one afternoon, I picked up the guitar at home and out came this song. I can’t tell you where these things come from, they just fall out of the sky. It’s a song of defiance, which is why I thought it would be a good opening track. There is absolutely no chance on God’s green Earth that I’m ever going to play it live because it is a fucking bastard to sing. I needed at least 20 takes to do it.”

“Pretty Boy”
“It was the first demo that I did and first song that I completed, so [making it the first single] seemed like the right thing to do. I won’t lie, I perversely thought, ‘Well, when people hear that it’s yet another drum machine, I shall bathe in their tears.’ Although I don’t go out of my way to challenge my audience, I do like to engage with them. So it keeps them on their toes a little bit. And you are in a pretty good spot if you’ve been making music for 30 years and you’re still dancing on the edge of ‘Is this acceptable or not?’ I haven’t fallen into a rut of trying to rewrite ‘Little by Little’ endlessly, I’m still pushing it a little bit.”

“Dead to the World”
“I happened to be in the studio one very, very quiet evening, and I hit those two chords that I’d never played before. They set the mood immediately. It’s very melancholy. It’s a personal song, and I don’t do many of those. Well, at least I don’t admit to doing many of those. But it speaks for itself. I always stay in the same hotel [in Argentina] and the fans are outside 24 hours a day, singing Oasis tunes. They’re always getting the words wrong. One night, I could hear them and that line just came to me. The original lyric said, ‘You can learn all the words, but you’ll still get them wrong.’ But when I did it here, for some reason, I sang ‘change’. Those kids in Argentina, that’s for them.”

“Open the Door, See What You Find”
“If people can get as far as the chorus, they’ll love it. Even when I was writing it, I was a bit like, ‘Yeah, the strings are great, that’s going to fit. The verses are a bit…whatever.’ But when you get to the chorus, it’s like a burst of sunshine. If it’s about anything, it’s about looking in the mirror and accepting who you are. There’s a saying that once you get into your fifties and you look in the mirror, you see all that you are and all that you’re ever going to be. That’s where the line ‘I see all that I will ever know’ comes from. It’s about saying, ‘I see all that I am and all that I’m ever going to be. And you know what? It’s all right.’”

“Trying to Find a World That’s Been and Gone Pt. 1”
“Just, again, in lockdown, wondering what the fuck it was going to be like on the other side of this thing, when we were all allowed to mix together. There were weird days, endless days at home in the silence, homeschooling the kids, the conspiracy theories and all this bullshit that was going on. [The song] also has a dual meaning because it could be about a loved one or the break-up of a relationship. It’s ‘Pt. 1’ because it had this second part to it where the drums came in and the big production, but I had a moment of clarity in the studio and went back to the original demo. When it was cut down to this two-minute thing, it said more to me.”

“Easy Now”
“I had the longest phone call with [Pink Floyd’s] Dave Gilmour. I said, ‘I’ve got this tune and it’s very reminiscent of the mighty Floyd, and I was just thinking, if you could do one of your uplifting guitar solos…’ He was like, ‘Well, look, I love the song, but I don’t think I can do that kind of thing anymore.’ Honestly, I begged him on the phone and, fair play to him, he was not for turning. It was in the middle of the pandemic and everybody was isolated, and it was going to be a ball ache anyway. I said to my co-producer [Paul ‘Strangeboy’ Stacey], who’s a brilliant guitarist, ‘You’re going to have to mimic Dave Gilmour.’ And that’s what he did.”

“Council Skies”
“I was in Ibiza and maybe that’s where the feeling, the rhythm of it, came from. I had the melody, but I didn’t have any of the words. I always tend to write from the chorus backwards, so if I can get the chorus, the verses will fall into place. Back in England, that book [Sheffield painter Pete McKee’s Council Skies] happened to be on a shelf underneath the coffee table. There it was: Council Skies. That set off a chain of events where it’s like, ‘Right, underneath the council skies…’ The song is about trying to find young love on a council estate, trying to find beauty in the big, bad city. [The intro] is me playing some digital tuned gongs. Tuned gongs—it doesn’t get any more prog than that, right? I’ve got no other life outside of music, so I buy musical instruments, any old shit, that’s what I do. It was just like a digital percussion thing—I didn’t even know there was tuned gongs in it.”

“There She Blows!”
“I have no idea why I would write a song about some nautical bullshit. So I’m in LA working on another project with [producer] Dave Sardy, and in the hotel, one of the books on the bookshelf is Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Not that I would ever read it, but I can only surmise that it might have something to do with that. When the Get Back documentary came out, I was so glad that it captured the haphazard, winging-it kind of way that The Beatles were writing. George is going, ‘Oh, I’m stuck on this one.’ They’re saying, ‘Just make it up. Write the first thing that comes into your head when you get up in the morning.’ I’m like, ‘That’s what I fucking do!’ I think I’ve met everyone apart from Bob Dylan, and you realise they’re all just like you, with varying degrees of talent. It’s like they’re all shit kickers trying to make it, and nobody’s better than the other. We’re all blagging it. Nine times out of 10, you’re just throwing enough shit at the wall and seeing what sticks—and then trying to make it rhyme.”

“Love Is a Rich Man”
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I actually wrote that while I was riding a bike. I’ve got a place out in the country, and I was just riding a bike down the country lane. It’s very kind of ’80s-period Bowie. And it’s got a marimba on it, for fuck’s sake. It’s a funny old song. I do like it though. I love the backing vocals and the chorus bit is great, and the guitars on it are brilliant.”

“Think of a Number”
“It’s quite a personal song and it’s quite bleak, which is why I thought, ‘Can it open the album?’ And really, in hindsight, it should have done. I love the words, and it’s quite epic. There’s three solo breaks—a piano solo, a guitar solo, another instrumental break. There’s a couple of drop-downs. That’s me playing bass, funnily enough. I was doing it in here with [drummer] Chris Sharrock, saying, ‘Look, it’ll be like a bit like XTC or Bowie or that kind of New Wave thing.’ He came up with the drum beat, I had the bassline and it went from there.”

“We’re Gonna Get There in the End”
“I wrote that in lockdown and put it out on YouTube, just as a gift to fans. And wouldn’t you know it, everybody went apeshit for it. So when I was doing this record, my people were saying, ‘Is that not going to be on the album? Everybody loves that song.’ I was like, ‘Sadly, the one person in the world who doesn’t love it is me. I’m not having a jaunty Britpop song in the middle of this reflective, kind of melancholic record.’ However, I recorded it and it sounded great. I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to play it live, so I’ll just stick it on as a bonus track.’ And as no one does B-sides anymore, you can assume this is one of the great B-sides of my career.”

I'm seeing NG live next week. I wanna hear the new songs live first. I'll listen to the album after the gig. But I like reading fan takes in the meantime. It makes me even more excited to listen.

If you loved Pretty Boy and were disappointed by Easy Now, I really wanna hear your take on the album

Really like the album, not blown away but better than I expected. No terrible songs although the second half is weaker than the first which breezes by with effortless tunes. Love the opener, when Noel digs into soul influences, he always produces some of my favourite songs. Also reminds me of U2, the low register verses seem to echo Running To Stand Still.

I've really come to dig Pretty Boy, even if the chorus is lacking but it has a driving rhythm to it that wins me over. Easy Now is a hodge podge of ideas but there's something of the old Noel spirit that has eventually endeared me to it but sadly weighed down by production issues, as it definitely deserves a lighter, brighter and sparser production. Surprised by the initial negative reaction to Open The Door, I absolutely love it with a top chorus. Reminds me very much of a mixture of Waiting On A Sunny Day by Bruce Springsteen and an All Things Must Pass track. Trying To Find A World... is beautiful though. The demo passed me by but something struck a chord with me this time around. Has that kind of langourous, dreamy melody that he always nailed as a songwriter in his 20s.

There She Blows and Love Is A Rich Man seem lacking though and start to veer into Chasing Yesterday's shite dad rock. There She Blows has a great verse but descends into stodgy and derivative bland chorus, while Love Is A Rich Man is a blander, poor mans If Love Is The Law without the latter's melodic and wall of sound qualities.

The album lacks the soundscapes and the little sonic curiosities of Who Built The Moon, to the point that I would like to have heard David Holmes producing these conventional songs in a more cinematic fashion - i.e. with the kitchen sink thrown at it completely. But for the most part, it isn't a rock album thank god, and it's a light and pleasant listen with lovely melodies. Nothing as in your face as Everybodys On The Run, Broken Arrow and Death of You & Me, but the album is much more consistent and I think it's probably the second best after Who Built The Moon. He's always been a pop songwriter, not a rock writer and he definitely plays to those strengths here.

Thanks for this, good to read. I'll be honest here...

My opinions will likely change on a different day but the fun of this forum is to post something worth debating. This is not meant to offend anyone, it's okay if you feel totally differently, but I just would like to tell the truth of what's resonating here...

It's sad to me! I think with the attitude Noel conveys in his interviews over the last decade or so, it's no surprise the music he's releasing is generally coming across a little tired, boring, mid paced. Releasing music where you openly admit on the album launch that the verses are meh ...that's the world's greatest songwriting genius we knew, now fallen from his heights.

He's of course showing a few glimmers of real and raw personal intimacy in the music. Songs like Dead In The Water, We're On Our Way Now, Dead To The World... if we focused only on these, I think he would become the greatest ever version of himself, musically, as a solo artist.

Even rarer though, are the courageous flashes of rock and roll greatness... that time and era and energy is such a faded shadow of a time gone by, I wish he'd just leave it alone and write purely acoustically.

Time's have not changed kindly for Noel. NG feels like an old to middle aged fella floating around without his old spark, clinging on a little to a bit of the past and a bit of the future, neither really committing to either, nor very comfortable in the present day.

The energy feels so tired, but not lovably so like "Talk Tonight"... it's still with the mask of maintaining some sense of status, ego and power... which does the truth of his gentle soul a disservice. 

Feels like the man is lacking the real punch and power of loving exactly who he is now and who he sings for, perhaps even what he lives for... Liam was the lion in his pack, and without him, the bite isn't the same. And the tenderness is too tender for him to truly reveal (and I suspect, for him to truly feel, anymore). I don't think that he can see that it's the greatest part of his musical tapestry... the gold he hides as B sides, as if those touching songs aren't the real prize.

As men get older, a lot of us start to go "offline", unable to connect with the increasing mountains of pain and disappointment in life, unable to continue to visit those places and channel them as they once did, with true bravery or angst or hurt. It would take a great amount of inner work to touch into that pain again and live there long enough to truly experience it and then speak to it and write from that place. It takes energy...

All said, I'll say this. Thanks for the good times Noel, no one can say you haven't already given us the world. You've done more than your duty on this earth - an all time legend in music. Wishing grace and dignity and maybe even new highs in the future. You've been a king and a hero to so many of us, you deserve love and thanks alone 🙏 

"... but the album is much more consistent and I think it's probably the second best after Who Built The Moon. He's always been a pop songwriter, not a rock writer and he definitely plays to those strengths here."

THIS!

BOWie?

My track by track review:

1. INGUT. A fitting start that encapsulates the whole album. The song just flows, ends in a breeze, and you just want to listen to it again. It works both as a dance song (see the remix) and as a indie poprock song because it's simply a great song

2. Pretty Boy. Still think the same as when it was released: a strong song, but a weird option for a first single. The chorus ('She was a lot like me...') provides a very welcome break to the somewhat repetitive
structure, but it comes a bit too late

3. Dead to the world. It has one of those inmortal melodies you think: there is no way nobody wrote this before...but apparently nobody did. Hail to the chief

4. Open the door.... The verses, the instrumental part and the bridge (chorus?) are pure joy. The bridge ('Open the door/See what you find
...) is more Noel on autopilot, but the overall result is still catchy as hell

5. Trying to find a world... With Easy Now, the one that sounds more like Oasis. Initially I thought this was nice but sounded unfinished. I still think there is something missing if you consider it as a standalone track, but it works very well when listening to the album in full

6. Easy Now. One of my least favourites in the album. Not because it's bad (it's not) but because it is so similar to so many past songs. But there's not point in denying the hooks are there and every casual listener seems to love It, so who am I to disagree

7. Council skies. This was the single I listened on repeat while waiting for the album. The mix can certainly be improved, but once I got used to it, there are plenty of hooks to enjoy here

8. There she blows. Love the initial verse. Also the work put into the production. This song had everything to be the filler song we get in every album (e.g. The Mexican), but the effort put into it elevated it

9. Love is a rich man. It reminds me of Riverman, with that very conventional rock build up to a very melodic chorus ('You can run and hide to your happy place...'). Not as strong as Riverman but still very good

10. Think of a number. I remember an old Bono interview in Mojo where he marvelled at how many hooks Noel put in a single song (this was in the glory days): amazing melodies in the verses, the bridge, the chorus,...and then the middle eight, and then an amazing instrumental break...more strong hooks in a song than many groups had in a whole album..This song reminded me of those times. Well done, Noel.

11. We're gonna get there in the end. A great end for a great album. I loved the demo, love the final version even more

Well done, Mr. Noel Thomas Gallagher, you fucking little bastard. Keep them coming