Liam Gallagher's three songs help keep the group's standards high

It's hard not to think of Nero when you think of Liam Gallagher. You know Nero, the guy who reputedly played his fiddle with carefree abandon while his Roman Empire burned. Liam is like that. His Oasis might be in flames but you wouldn't know it to meet and speak with him.

He just carries on seemingly oblivious to his band's falling record sales and audience attendance. If he does smell something burning, he doesn't let on, although surely he must know. A recent greatest hits album, Stop the Clocks, concentrated on the early hits from 1991, such as "Wonderwall" and "Champagne Supernova," while completely ignoring later relative failures "The Hindu Times" or "Songbird." Despite having the most stupid album title ever, Don't Believe the Truth was a creative and commercial comeback for Oasis but the band still has work to do.

Today, the band releases Dig Out Your Soul, which builds from 2005's Don't Believe the Truth and is the band's best record since it came out of Manchester in 1991 with Definitely Maybe. Main songwriter Noel Gallagher has given over more control to Liam, who has three songs on the album, while Gem Archer and Andy Bell have one song each. This has lightened Noel Gallagher's burden while keeping the standard high. The result is impressively more cohesive than might be expected with a vaguely psychedelic air wrapping around it.

"The standards are always high," Liam Gallagher says. "Some days you win, some days you lose."

At GM Place, a month before the album's release, Liam wanders about the backstage area with an unpretentious demeanour. He seems approachable and friendly and not at all like the combative person he has been portrayed as. Marriage, fatherhood and his rising stature as a songwriter must have changed him. He appears contented and happy with his place in Oasis. That doesn't make him anymore animated in concert. A few hours later, he'll take the GM Place stage, place his hands behind his back, won't say a word to the audience of approximately 8,000, appear to be arrogant and will further the impression that Oasis is one of the most boring live bands in existence. If it weren't for new drummer Chris Sharrock's compelling energy, which makes Oasis watchable, the five players simply would be taking up space.

Does this bother him? No, he's Nero, remember?

"I'm sure it sounds alright," he appraises the new album bluntly. "It's just rock and roll.

"I don't sit down and think about it. I just do what I do, you know what I mean?

"What is Oasis music anyway?" Liam asks rhetorically. "I don't know."

Whatever Oasis music is, it had its believers. Noel Gallagher transformed his Beatles fixation into wild popularity and talked a bold line of hype. The English music media were too afraid to doubt him and just waited for him to trip. He did around Be Here Now amid personnel changes and fights with Liam. The creative success signified by Dig Out Your Soul must have given him some equilibrium with which to rebuild. Liam doesn't address the situation, saying only that Dig Out Your Soul's back-to-basics nature "was meant to start out like that. We put everything on the tape and then started to pull back. A lot of the tunes started with acoustic guitar. We didn't want to get too cosmic."

Which implies that at the time of Oasis's falling popularity it did.

The new album, then, is Oasis wrestling back control. Liam stares like this had never occurred to him.

"It was my idea to make the record," he claims. "Noel didn't want to do it."

Noel rose to Liam's challenge and Liam elevated his writing. The songs touch on The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour," "Taxman" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" with a nod to rhythm and blues and psychedelia.

Liam can see the psychedelic element, noting the influence of The Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow and The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society.

"I had three songs," he says. They are "I'm Outta Time," "Ain't Got Nothing," and a song that uncharacteristically sounds like resolution, "Soldier On."

"I was immensely happy. I just like to sing in the band. I worry more about losing my voice than writing songs."

via L4e / source: The Vancouver Province

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