10 Friday May 27 2022 | the timesmusic reviews
Then you realise: More Power is Yo u
Can’t Always Get What You Want by
the Rolling Stones with added snarls.
Mining the lyrics for revelations on
Gallagher’s state of mind is a fruitless
task too. “I don’t wish I had more
power,” he said in a recent interview.
“It’s just a song.”
It’s just a song that, like the rest of
C’mon You Know, has been shaped by
the American pro-level songwriters
Andrew Wyatt and Greg Kurstin, who
have been tasked with guiding
Gallagher Jr’s hugely successful solo
career by sticking to a formula sure to
please the Oasis faithful.
And in true Oasis fashion the lyrics
may not mean much at all, but they do
convey Gallagher’s winning blend of
belligerence, hedonism and refusal to
take life too seriously. “I was spangled
as a flag in America,” he reveals on
Don’t Go Halfway, a Stone Roses-like
groove about, well, not much at all.
Against a primeval stomp, a one-note
piano section and a massive guitar riff,
C’mon You Know offers celebratory
words about living for the moment.Liam Gallagher
once again reminds
us what a great
band he left, says
Will Hodgkinson
I
n February Liam Gallagher gave
a summation of his forthcoming
third album. “It’s a bit peculiar,”
said the former singer of Oasis
who, with his brother Noel, led
arguably the most significant
rock’n’roll band to emerge from
working-class Britain since
the Beatles.
Blaming his new exploratory phase
on the discombobulating influence of
the lockdown, he later stated: “If
there’s a time to be doing weird shit,
that time is now.” Had Gallagher
abandoned the beery singalongs for a
27-minute clavichord solo inspired by
the spiritual revelations he underwent
during an ayahuasca retreat in the
Peruvian jungle? Would his hordes of
parka-clad acolytes be listening while
scratching their collective heads in
confusion and despair?
In a word, no. “A bit peculiar” for
Gallagher means adding the odd
psychedelic echo or electronic
reverberation on to the familiar
anthemic rock, with his John Lennon-
meets-Johnny Rotten vocals high
in the mix and sounding as full of
attitude as, if a little more weathered
than, ever.
Having said that, the album’s opener,
More Power, is certainly a lot more
gentle than what you might expect
from a man who once dismissed the
sea as a no-go area occupied by
“sharks and jellyfish, tadpoles and
stuff”. It features a casually strummed
acoustic guitar, a children’s choir and
Gallagher apologising to his mother
for being angry before wishing he
had more power.Liam Gallagher, more
weathered but as full
of attitude as everLiam Gallagher
C’mon You
Know
Wa r n e r R e c o r d s
{{{{(pop
I
f the cover image doesn’t grab
your attention — a smiling gent
luxuriating on a fancy sofa in a
voluminous white dress and high
heels — the voice displayed in
this first album from Decca’s new
signing certainly will. It’s the voice of
a sopranista, Samuel Mariño, right,
from Venezuela, one of the rare
examples of a male singer able to
spiral into the top of the soprano
range without switching to the falsetto
voice, or without having been
castrated before puberty, which
wouldn’t now be allowed.
How to describe the voice you hear
gamboling through 18th-century
repertoire by Mozart and Gluck, and
rarities by Domenico Cimarosa and
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-
Georges? The words “radiant” and
“pure” come to mind, with “thrilling”
perhaps jumping in when the throat
opens wide and the notes blaze away,
fierce as the unfiltered rays of the
summer sun. At other times, when
Mariño is quiet, the comparison ismore with icing sugar, or a shepherd’s
pipe, perfectly appropriate in arias
from Mozart’s opera Il re pastore
(The Shepherd King).
Garnished with lively
accompaniments from
Andrea Marcon and La Cetra
Barockorchester Basel, the album’s
delights and novelties do, however,
come with drawbacks. One sung
word blends into the next, generating
a flow of golden vocalise. With blurredStill aged
only 19, Alfie
Templeman is
a Bedfordshire
songwriter
making a noise in
Gen Z circles for his
combination of confessional indie
pop and laid-back R&B.
His accomplished debut takes on the
challenges of young 21st-century life:
catchy Broken finds him worrying,
“I say all the wrong things, get up in
the evening,” while the funk-driven
3D Feelings turns emotional confusion
into celebratory pop, and the Steely
Dan-like Colour Me Blue is a message
of friendship for someone dealing
with their own gloomy moments.
The lightness of the music
combined with the therapeutic lyrics
palls over an entire album, but it
marks Templeman as a smart and
thoughtful new artist; one to watch.words come blurred characterisations,
though expressive possibilities
inevitably shrink the higher any voice
flies. But if you want to hear
Cherubino’s aria Voi che sapete from
The Marriage of Figaro sung by a male
soprano, here finally is your chance.
On balance, take it.
Another striking, though more
conventional, voice is showcased
in Helen Charlston’s recital. The
powerful mezzo-soprano’s
accompanist is Toby Carr, armed
with a theorbo, the giraffe of the
lute family. Seventeenth-century
fare is contrasted with a recent song
cycle by Owain Park, Battle Cry,
a programme designed to present
women in more positive ways than
the suffering stereotypes of many
song texts allow. Bathed in an
unhelpful church acoustic, the
recital is impressively thoughtful
and sometimes compelling,
though without being slam-bang
enjoyable.
Geoff BrownHe’s the tops: a male soprano hits the high notes
Reigniting the early Eighties trend
for doom-laden alternative rock of a
literate hue, when men such as Ian
McCulloch and Ian Curtis wandered
about in overcoats and managed to
look cool yet deep, come this
supergroup of sorts.
The singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt,
guitarist Richard Jones of the Feeling
and drummer Cass Browne of Gorillaz
and the Senseless Things are behind
it, and the mood is funereal and
atmospheric, from the gothic drama
of Strange Angels to the Echo & the
Bunnymen-like Gallon Distemper.
Then there is The Illusionist, an
emotional rocker that is crying out
to soundtrack the sad scenes of an
Eighties teen movie. The result is a
rare thing: a supergroup who are
bigger than the sum of their parts.SHIRLAINE FORREST/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGESThis formula will sate Oasis fans
e in
or his
f confessionalindieLoup Garoux
Strangerlands
Wolf Cabin
{{{{(As the title borrowed from a T. Rex
lyric suggests, the latest by one of
Britain’s biggest heavy metal bands is a
tribute to the glam era of Marc Bolan,
David Bowie and Roxy Music. That
means rock’n’roll riffs, stomping
drums and pop melodies, with Kick
recalling the heavy bubblegum of
the Sweet, and Take What You Want
reviving Mott the Hoople’s
altogether-now spirit.
It’s a good idea, but the songs never
really soar, and when they head
toward soppy ballad territory on
Angels it gets more Bryan Adams than
Bryan Ferry. Def Leppard established
themselves as the best pop songwriters
in the Eighties golden age of metal,
but with the exception of This Guitar
— a nice, if cheesy, country rock duet
with Alison Krauss — nothing here
pushes them forward.Def Leppard
Diamond Star Halos
Mercury
{{(((Alfie Templeman
Mellow Moon
Chess Club
{{{((Samuel Mariño
Sopranista
Decca
{{{{(Helen Charlston
Battle Cry
Delphian
{{{((classical
With Too Good for Giving Up, one of
those big ballads Oasis did so well,
Gallagher goes Zen as he suggests,
sagely: “The universe will provide.”
The unspoken reality of all this is
that Gallagher and his cohorts are
essentially emulating the work of a
man he has variously described as a
“shitbag’’, a “potato’’ and “one of the
biggest cocks in the universe’’: his
brother. There is even a song called
Everything’s Electric, a close call to
Oasis’s She’s Electric.
And on the rare moments the album
strays from the Oasis formula, such as
on the punk/dub-tinged I’m Free,
Gallagher sounds much less
convincing. It proves that, whatever
insults Liam and Noel have spent the
past three decades flinging at each
other, something about the two of
them together is just magical.
As it ends with the Beatlesesque
sweetness of Oh Sweet Children, this
very good album by the former singer
of Oasis really serves to remind us of
what an amazing band Oasis were.
One day, I suspect, they will return.