Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 06/10/08
Label: Big Brother

If there was a moment in Oasis' history when the clocks all stopped and their churning morass of conservative influences finally fossilised into an antiquated relic, it was in February, 2000, when new recruit Gem Archer's redesign of the band logo was revealed to resemble a moon-sized pair of aviator shades. Trivial? Yeah, but then again no: tragically out-of-date from its unveiling on the band's ill-received fourth LP "Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants", this lumbering font from the abyss signalled the end of Oasis as an ongoing concern and ushered in the notion of Oasis as a 12-year-old's idea of a rock band, all monobrowed bluster and no content.

Since then it's all been so much railing against the coffin lid for the Mancunian tough nuts, but while rumours of Oasis' resurrection have no doubt been exaggerated, "Dig Out Your Soul" is likely the record critics had in mind when lavishing praise on its iffy 2005 predecessor, "Don't Believe The Truth". That's not merely wishful thinking: there's no 'going back' for a band so firmly entrenched in their ways - and given their legacy of conservatism theirs is a second coming not everyone would relish - but "Dig Out Your Soul" manages the nifty trick of playing to its performers' strengths whilst gently nudging at an envelope whose edges have rarely been troubled.

Much of this excitement is traceable to a noisy front-end with more firepower than "Saving Private Ryan"'s opening sequence, from "The Turning"'s tumultuous chorus that's like being bitch-slapped by a brontosaurus to seismic first single "The Shock Of The Lightning", which while not exactly blessed with the most memorable of melodies in the Oasis songbook, at least rocks with a scorched-earth conviction that's not been seen around these parts in years.

If there are moments when the feted snap and snarl of yore amounts to little more than ramming generic blues licks down the audience's throat, they're tempered with moments of discovery like the lysergic "To Be Where There's Life" and "Falling Down" which displays an uncharacteristic lightness of touch.

Inevitably, there are howlers, too: Liam Gallagher's "I'm Outta Time" is the kind of drizzling MOR tripe Richard Ashcroft's been turning up his overcoat collar to for years, while "High Horse Lady"'s stilted blues is plainly awful. Ultimately though, "Dig Out Your Soul" is a record worth shaking hands with, and coming off the back of a decade of auto-piloted drudgery, that's got to count for something.

    by Alex Denney