Oasis - Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants

4.5 - England - 2000

Oasis's first two albums are classic, if rather over-rated, slabs of tradrock. The third, Be Here Now is an utter fiasco of boorish bombast, but it actualy kinda works as a Spinal Tap-ian parody of Oasis's witless arrogance and vulgar grandiloquence ("this song's so epic, it's gonna need two orchestras!"). Unfortunately, Be Here Now suffers from not being the group's swansong -- if only they had just im/exploded from all that doltish excess, they would have had a much better metanarrative.

Which brings us to Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants [sic]. The bassist and rhythm guitarist are gone leaving only the Brothers Gallagher and Alan "Plays The Same Beat All The Time" White. Not that that matters at all. The resulting record is a lurching slog of zombie-like gestures as a clearly spent band pretends to stay alive.

Apparently, this is Oasis's attempt at an experimental album as, twenty years after the Happy Mondays and thirty-five years after the Beatles, they've mucked around with some drum loops and sitars and -- hold on to your hats, folks -- backwards guitars. Yes, you read that right: backwards guitars. What will they think of next?!

"Go Let It Out", the loop-based, Beta-Band-aping attempt at relevance is actually quite pleasant and lead-off instrumental "Fuckin' In The Bushes" is a minor thrill (and also a demonstration that Oasis are ballsy enough to drop an f-bomb in a song title but not quite ballsy enough to have it written on the outer packaging -- gotta protect those Walmart sales!). The only other passable track is the Liam-penned "Little James", a tribute to his stepson that features such lyrical howlers as "You live for your toys / Even though they make noise / Have you ever played with plasticine? / Or even tried a trampoline?" Nice to see you writing at your level, Liam. Seriously, it is actually quite cute; one can readily imagine Liam and the toddler interacting as a genuine meeting of equal minds. Still, praising the song is rather like pinning a toddler's scrawling on the fridge. I mean, yeah, you're proud that little William drew what you assume is a kitty-cat, but it's not fucking Guernica. Or even Dinotopia.

Anyway, everything else really sucks. "Who Feels Love?" and "Gas Panic!" are lazy, failed attempts at being interesting. There's also the trite cock rock gestures of tracks 4 and 9 which are so half-assed, I'm not even going to bother giving their names. And then Noel takes over the vocal mic on a couple of tracks to whinge about the travails of being a rich rock star. The final track then takes the melody of Morning Glory's "Cast No Shadow" and pointlessly stretches it out for eight minutes. Still, it's all fairly well-recorded, I guess.