Another review:

inews.co.uk/culture/music/liam-gallagher-down-by-the-river-thames-review-oasis-786064


Liam Gallagher, Down by the River Thames, review: snarling vocals recall Oasis’ peak

By Joe Goggins
December 7, 2020

“Not arsed about you, big wheel,” Liam Gallagher sneered during his live-stream concert, Down by the River Thames, as his barge sailed past the London Eye. “Big thing, round, very good, f**k off.”

Until now, it had all been unnervingly sedate. This slick show, shot a month ago and clearly intended to evoke the Sex Pistols’s 1977 riverboat concert The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, had treated punters (the ticket cost £16) to handsome, tourist-eye-view pictures of the capital and a band every bit as tight as the photography. Gallagher’s outburst was reassuring: he is, after all, still a living byword for rock’n’ roll ramshackle long after Oasis’s heyday.

Opener Hello was a reminder of why the younger Gallagher is now the fans’ favourite; setting aside the fact that it lifts so liberally from Gary Glitter’s Hello, Hello, I’m Back Again that he’s credited as a co-writer, it still carries the kind of swaggering belligerence that was the band’s calling card in the 90s. Dressed accordingly in a Stone Island jacket and a bucket hat pulled down over his eyes was Bonehead, who joined for the Oasis tracks and would not have been out of place in the crowd, if there was one.

At home, at least, the Oasis fans will have been delighted with the clutch of classics on the set list, plucked from the noisier end of the oeuvre and including a furiously upbeat Fade Away, a typically aggressive Morning Glory, and a rendition of Cigarettes and Alcohol that Gallagher updated for 2020 by bookending the line “is it worth the aggravation to find yourself a job when there’s nothing worth working for?” with a characteristically blunt rebuke to Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson.
Elsewhere, this was an impressive showcase for Gallagher’s solo work – his third album Come On You Know is due next year. His newer songs remain intertwined by design with his old band, whether it be Halo channelling Lyla by borrowing from the Rolling Stones, or Why Me? Why Not. echoing the soundscape of Slide Away.

There was something strangely poignant about the fact that he cut short the final song, Champagne Supernova, performed against the backdrop of the Houses of Parliament. Late-90s optimism is written so intrinsically into its DNA that it felt almost inappropriate in a present day ravaged by a pandemic and overshadowed by Brexit’s looming spectre.

For all the polish of his backing band and the stately manner in which the show was filmed, Gallagher’s vocal performance recalled Oasis’s peak, his snarling tones soaring on the likes of Columbia and Supersonic – a world away from the thin whine that came to characterise the group’s latter days. A reunion seems further away now than ever. In the meantime, Down by the River Thames leaves no doubt as to which brother offers the closest approximation.