Album Review: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Chasing Yesterday

It’s hard for an artist, especially one as critically acclaimed as Noel Gallagher, to separate themselves from their past. Both of the Gallagher brothers have attempted it, but it seems only one has succeeded. That being said, I challenge you to find a review or impressions piece on Chasing Yesterday which is free of talk regarding Oasis, I can tell you that this article certainly won’t be.

Despite resorting back to the odd piece of older material, Chasing Yesterday is a clear step away from his work in Oasis, and Noel’s first solo album released four years ago. Noel manages to make old ideas sound fresh and innovative in 2015, and we're talking almost 20 year-old ideas here. With a variety of songs ranging from easy-listening pop beats to classic rock, it’s easy to see why the latest work is a step away from the past, and a pretty good, arguably necessary, change to Noel’s previous work.

However, it’s not a complete change. Riffs and melodies may have changed from the instantly recognisable likes of ‘If I Had a Gun…’, which almost immediately made Oasis fans trip back to the nostalgic memories of hearing ‘Wonderwall’ for the first time, but Noel’s new tunes remain catchy after the nth listen, and they certainly do become the air-punching ballads that we’ve been promised after only a few instances.

Tracks are certainly new, but not a step into obscurity; it’s an appropriate change which seems to hit the fine line between experimentation and expectation.

That being said, Chasing Yesterday is chock-full of charm. It’s an album which needs to be listened through from start to finish, not necessarily for the narrative it tells, or the sequence of songs, but for how each song bleeds into each other. Sometimes you’ll get a bit of synth which transitions from one song to another, like between ‘The Girl With X-Ray Eyes’ and ‘Lock All The Doors’, (which are arguably two of the stronger tracks on the album), and you’ve still got all the count-ins and snippets of communication between the band at the beginnings and ends of songs which fans will love.

While the new stuff isn’t exactly the raw, swagger-inducing rock which preceded it in the 90s, Noel’s stuff does have some trace elements of rock, and even though some of the better tunes stem from that nostalgic period, (the ideas behind ‘Lock All The Doors’ are at least 20 years old, and ‘The Dying Of The Light’ has been floating around, being played during sound-checks for a few years), their lengthy development certainly shouldn’t be held against them.

His solo work does seem a lot more relaxed in comparison to his previous endeavours, and that trait is continued here. Chilled songs vary in their catchiness, and tend to be a tad more forgettable, but at the very least their atmosphere will make you relaxed enough to endure. To give the man further credit, he knows how to pick out his singles, and I’d sincerely hope that ‘Lock All The Doors’ is next in line to receive the standalone treatment, it really does embody the anthems that Noel was apparently trying to create.

As someone who’s distanced himself from the likes of Elbow and The Verve in recent years, maybe I’m just not as fond of more relaxed music, although this wasn’t an issue with Noel’s last album. In order to try and stagger towards some kind of conclusion, I’ll attempt to be somewhat statistical about this. On Chasing Yesterday, there are six songs which became the catchy, sing-while-drunk ballads which I expected from the mastermind behind Oasis. I don’t think it’s a case of quality, rather taste. Noel’s listed ‘The Right Stuff’ and ‘Riverman’ in the top twelve songs that he’s wrote, yet they weren’t among my favourites for this album, never mind his discography. As I write this, ‘The Right Stuff’ is starting to grow on me exponentially, so it, along with the other six, will be making their way onto a playlist of mine in the very near future. 

But that’s not to say the others aren’t good; I’m pretty sure that this man could whack out a tune consisting of white noise and snippets of a political debate, and we’d still like it. At the very least, someone would call it the long-lost Oasis song that they’ve been searching for over the last 20 years.

Long story short, if you like his solo debut from a few years ago, you’ll like (or love) Chasing Yesterday. You’d also love the deluxe version for the B-Side ‘Do the Damage’, and the personally long-awaited proper recording of ‘Freaky Teeth’. If you were after the revival of Brit-pop and all the brash sentiments which came with it, you’d be a tad disappointed. 

But, if you can look at these songs without holding certain expectations of them due to their classification in the rock genre, you’ll be in for a treat. It does seem a bit odd, the fact that the title of Chasing Yesterday has seemingly no links with his previous work, or even any of the main themes of his past album. But if I were to be cynical, I’d guess that all Noel’s recent vocal outbursts didn’t line up with the release of this album purely from coincidence, because after all, there’s no such thing as bad publicity is there? Especially for a man like him.

Regardless, he’s held it steady with his second solo release, and now has our hopes up for an equal, ideally even better, third installment. And also, he’s started singing a song about lasagna on his live tour. 

Yes, N.G.