Disco de Oasis: “Don't Believe the Truth”

As someone who thinks Heathen Chemistry is a great album, I find this less a return to form, as it's generally being hailed, but as a continuation of this return. Always embracing their influences, I can hear plenty of traces of (of course) The Beatles, but also the Stones and an outro reminiscent to Mrs. Robinson in the song Lyla.

This is strong, confident, BIG rock and roll, and the songs are fantastic.

The difference between 4 and 5 stars for me is this: The lyrics are uniformly strong, but don't really take it to the next level. The biggest example is the use of the phrase "Blowin' my mind." Three songs in a row use this phrase: Mucky Fingers ("All the phoneys blowin my mind"), Lyla "I waited for a thousand years for you to come and blow me out my mind"), and Love Like a Bomb ("Blown' my mind, Blowin' my mind, Blowin' my mind"). This isn't a bad lyric in any of the songs, but the non-thematic repetition of this same phrase lessens the scope, for me, of the album as a whole. Perhaps spacing the songs out, or defining the album in such a way as to indicate the link between this repetition would have helped.

Nevertheless, "The Importance of Being Idle" is an absolute stunner, immediately one of the great Oasis songs. In fact, all of Noel's songs shine the brightest. He's writing and especially singing as well as he ever has. Truly, truly, an excellent album, worthy of the high praise it's receiving in all circles.

Don't Believe the Truth may be Oasis's best album since What's the Story (Morning Glory)? Following the trend of the last album, the sound is stripped down, more back-to-basics, unlike the bloated, noisy Be Here Now. This time Oasis relies less on production tricks and multi-tracking and more on musicianship. Noel Gallagher is right: the current band members are superior players to the original line-up ("Bonehead," "Guigsy," and McCarroll). Zak Starkey - yep, Ringo's first-born - fills in admirably for Alan White who left and/or was kicked out of the band last year.

It's almost impossible to talk about Oasis without talking about their stealing and borrowing from others, most notably the Beatles and the Stones. This album, unlike others past, does not stand on the "shoulders of giants". It is quite fresh. If it sounds like anybody it sounds like Oasis. That's not to say that Oasis did not dip from others' wells for inspiration. "Mucky Fingers" is almost certainly intentionally lifted from "Come Together's" "monkey finger" bit. "Let There Be Love" is actually a retooling of a great old Oasis song formerly known as "It's a Crime," one of my favorite b-sides. The similarities between "Let There Be Love" and Lennon's "Real Love" and "Love is Real" are undeniable. Whatever the song suffers for being unoriginal it gains for being a duet Liam/Noel duet, each taking turns with alternating verses and choruses. "Lyla," the first single, does sound like "Street Fighting Man," at least in the intro. Beyond the intro, it's its own tune, with its own feel and energy.

Reading the lyrics out of the liner notes they are iffy at best. Poetry they're not. But when sung they are adequate or better. There are some great lyrics in spots. Oasis has finally retreated a bit from their tendency to be lazy when rhyming ("liar/fire") and somewhat cliche (". . . stars . . . faded away. . ."). They did put some version of "blow my mind" in back-to-back-to-back songs on the album. Before their lyrical weaknesses could all be pinned on Noel but not anymore. Noel only wrote about half the songs. Liam and Gem Archer wrote one together and Liam wrote two on his own. Andy Bell wrote two songs. The increasing contributions from the other members of the band, good or bad, has helped, on this and the last several albums, Oasis to expand their sound. It probably accounts for less plagiarism.

Here's a song-by-song review:

"Turn Up the Sun" - Starts slow with a dark, sad feel. It cranks up a bit and then ends like it started. Instrumentally it's a solid song. But it's not a single. I would have opened the album with a better song.

"Mucky Fingers" - A three-chord song that has a glam rock vibe. Noel sings it/shouts it. The harmonica and vocal style, as a friend of mine pointed out, sound like early electric Dylan. "Mucky Fingers" may grow on you.

"Lyla" - A catchy song. It doesn't hurt that it sounds like "Street Fighting Man". It is almost impossible not to like this song. In my opinion, it's one of the best rock and roll songs of the last year, up there with "Vertigo" (U2) and "Holiday" (Green Day).

"Love Like a Bomb" - Liam's best song on the album. Maybe his best ever, though that's not saying a lot. Some credit goes to Gem Archer as co-writer. The opening strumming is not entirely unlike "Hide Your Love Away," though it doesn't sound like a blatant rip-off. It's updated psychedelia.

"The Importance of Being Idle" - The best song on the album, bar none. It's Noel at his best, lyrically and vocally. Nice falsetto in the verses. "Idle" is a stew of "Wouldn't it Be Nice," "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" and "Alabama Song". I would buy this disk for this song alone.

"The Meaning of Soul" - A Liam effort, this is a two-chord mix of 60's rock and 70's punk.

"Guess God Thinks I'm Abel" - Another Liam-penned number. It's a medium tempo, acoustic and stripped down. Like so many Oasis songs, it has a positive message: "No one can break us if they try." It ends with a crash of the symbols and electronic noise.

"Part of the Queue" - "Every beginning is breaking its promise," is its best line. Noel takes the lead vocal. It opens with heavy drums and heavy acoustic strumming and gets warbly and psychedelic in the middle eight.

"Keep the Dream Alive" - This is Andy Bell's second song on the album. Great chorus and good guitar work. It's not clear what dream they're keeping alive. A nice effort. Oasis penchant for anthemic songs (like "All Around the World") carries through to this song with its "na na na's" and proclamations.

"A Bell Will Ring" - "A bell will ring inside your head" is, apparently, a good thing. The guitar work is my kind of stuff, reminiscent of "Paperback Writer," "Rain" and "She Said, She Said."

"Let There Be Love" - Fantastic as ballads go. I like it's Lennon-esque feel. It's also the only Liam/Noel duet I can recall.

All in all, this is a very good album. I hesitate to call it great because it's a bit hard to tell whether it will stand up over a few years. Be Here Now sounded great in 1997 but is hard to listen to in spots these days - Noel actually says it's a horrible record. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants' weaknesses are now more apparent than in March 2000. This album is stripped down enough that it should not suffer for its excesses. Don't Believe the Truth has the potential to be the third best record Oasis has ever made and it is about as good as just about any other rock album to come out in the last two or three years.

Rather than tear apart the latest effort by Oasis, I'd like to begin by pointing out several strong points on this album.

1. Lyla, the first single from this album, is a well-written, catchy song with some great vocals.

2. Let There Be Love is a beautiful song, and quite possibly one of Oasis's strongest ballads. Multiple listens and it gets even better.

3. Importance of Being Idle is a great song, and Noel does a great job on vocals. This tongue-in-cheek song about laziness is quite entertaining and a lot of fun to listen to. This track harkens back to some older Oasis...

Now for the weak points.

1. The first thing that ran through my head after listening through the album once was, "Who the heck is playing drums?" One of the weakest points of the album is the repetative, often dull drum beats. Two songs in particular come to mind: Mucky Fingers and Meaning of Soul. I don't know if they were trying for a "heavier" sound, but it came across as rather... well... "garage" sounding. I had no idea that Ringo's son drummed on this album until I read some of these reviews, but I have to say, I'm not impressed so far.

2. Unfortunately, many of these songs lack good hooks/climaxes. They start, but never go anywhere. The best way I can describe it is thus: when you have this CD playing in the background, nothing is so good that it comes OUT of the background and grabs your attention. This album lacks some of the indescribable "magic" one comes to expect from Oasis.

3. Finally, I have to agree with what many reviewers have said: the mixing on this album was terrible. I have a great stereo system in my car which does a great job of playing well-balanced music... you can hear everything, even over the noise of the road. However, when playing this in my car, it lacked depth and clarity, and came across like a wash of noise.

IN CLOSING: Is this album good? YES. Is it great? NO. However, it's worth a listen for the devoted Oasis fan. There are several songs on this album that take some getting used to, and require several listens before they begin to grow on you. "Don't Believe the Truth" is definately an "acquired" taste, but give it a chance... there ARE shining moments on this record.

Some reasons

-the rediscovery of acoustic guitar over electric. Some of the best Oasis songs were their b-sides in the mid 90s which relied on this and this new album abounds with it, done well

-the album has an integrity, the songs belong to each other, ie it feels like an album, not a collection of a songs. Heathen Chemistry failed on this count, Don't Believe the Truth succeeds

-new things are tried, both new kinds of instrumentation, new ways of using Noel and Liam's voice, different ways of composing songs that don't easily fit into the formula that Oasis has been cast into. And yet the newness doesn't undercut the reasons so many have gotten into the band

-As others have noted, Oasis has a history of bad lyrics, even in some of there finest songs (supersonic makes me laugh, gag that way) but this album has some great lines, decent lyrics, even a few insights which is a shock to me.

For those who have been waiting for an Oasis album which would not disappoint, would captures something of what makes the group a solid band, this album is worth a buy.

This is the first Oasis album I have ever purchased. I know that sounds crazy, but during the peak of their U.S. popularity in the 90s, I was more into grunge and paid little attention to "BritPop." I can tell you that from the day I put this in my CD player, it did not come out for three weeks. I actually heard the song "Lyla" on my FIFA soccer game, and that's the reason I got the album. I can definitely hear the Beatles' influence on their sound, specifically the guitar on "Lyla" (reminds me of "Getting Better") and the drums on "A Bell Will Ring" (reminds of "Tomorrow Never Knows"). And since I am new to the Oasis thing, can somebody explain to me what "BritPop" is supposed to mean? This isn't what I would call pop -- this is guitar-driven rock. This is the best album I've bought since the "Garden State" soundtrack more than a year ago. If the Beatles were together today, they'd sound like Oasis. I can't give this album a higher compliment than that.