God knows what it’s like for the output of the primary songwriter of a much-loved former rock band to be viewed as a byword for mediocrity, but that’s exactly what Noel Gallagher’s songs seem to have become. His three High Flying Birds albums (released in 2011, 2015, and 2017) featured tracks that buckled under the weight of expectation, object lessons in how to tarnish a once-garlanded reputation.
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Yet Council Skies contains Gallagher’s most cohesive batch of songs since Oasis’s 1995 album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? The templates are familiar: Beatles-esque melodies played tight and sweet, with little extemporisation. The themes, crucially, are rooted in childhood and teenage years. (Gallagher has said the album, from title and cover onwards, is all about “Daydreaming, looking up … and wondering about what life could be”.)
To this end, there is a solid grounding throughout, no experimental airs and graces, and some pop-rock beauties. Dead to the World could be a Nick Drake-Paul McCartney hybrid; Open the Door, See What You Find is what might have happened if Prince had ever written a song with the Beatles-era John Lennon; Trying to Find a World That’s Been and Gone is a mini-me version of Champagne Supernova. And on it goes.
A genuinely good Noel Gallagher album? Who’d have thought?
