Oasis: Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants

Years ago, my friend and future musical collaborator Matt Kelley gave me a copy of (What’s The Story) Morning Glory for Christmas (so this might have been around 1996 or 1997, if memory serves – and it usually doesn’t), and while I was appreciative of the gesture, I must say that I put it aside without any thought or desire to listen to it. At the time, I was knee-deep in classic rock, immersing myself with the discography of any band that was in regular rotation on WMGK, and shunning anything that had been formed after 1973. (I have since loosened my stance considerably on this way of thinking. What can I say – I was a stupid teenager who didn’t know any better.) So while I might have given the album a cursory listen or two – I distinctly remember thinking that ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ was a pretty good song – I never really got into them, thinking that their obvious nods to the Beatles were a little more than tired, and I’d rather listen to the genuine thing instead of a knock-off.

I still haven’t changed my way of thinking, though in one of the many musical library swaps in the past few years, I took the entirety of my friend Cameron’s collection of Oasis albums, thinking that one day I would get into them. This past summer, I listened to Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants pretty frequently, and, despite Cameron’s objections to review Don’t Believe The Truth, I’ve decided to go ahead anyway with my review of Giants. Sorry, Cam.

First of all, the grammatically incorrect album title was inspired by Sir Isaac Newton (“If I can see further than anyone else, it is only because I am standing on the shoulders of giants”) after a drunken evening – so, a normal evening – for guitarist and primary songwriter Noel Gallagher. Seeing the phrase scrawled on a £2 note, he himself jotted it down, accidentally leaving off the concluding “s” in “shoulder”. Additionally, during recording sessions for the album, rhythm guitarist Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs and bassist Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan departed for good, reducing the band to a trio. So this is effectively a Noel Gallagher solo album, with vocals by brother Liam and drums by Andy White.

The songs are pretty standard fare for Oasis, with many good ones and many of lesser quality. Opener ‘Fuckin’ In The Bushes’ is a pseudo-instrumental with a thundering drum groove and screaming guitar as an audio verité plays beneath the riff, with very British sounding people saying things like “Kids around naked, fucking in the bushes” and “Oh yes indeed, I love it, all are welcome!” It’s the kind of song that’s not particularly good, but it grabs you by the short hairs and refuses to let go. ‘Go Let It Out!’ begins with a strident drum intro (sampled from Johnny Jenkins’ ‘I Walk On Guilded Spliters’) and layers of ringing acoustic guitar before Liam Gallagher’s twenty-packs-a-day growl kicks in. The lyrical sentiments are of hope and optimism, with a little bit of karma thrown in. Noel once said this was the band’s attempt to sound like a modern-day Beatles, and the subtle touches of a percolating Mellotron certainly add to that atmosphere. ‘Who Feels Love?’ follows the trend of nicking the Beatles, with its thick layers of psychedelia thanks to sitars and tape phasing, yet beneath it all is a heartfelt ode to falling in love: “Thank you for the sun that shines down on everyone who feels love / Now there’s a million years between my fantasies and fears / I feel love”.

‘Put Yer Money Where Yer Mouth Is’ is an exercise in repetition, and isn’t particularly good. Married to a tenacious groove, it rocks pretty hard, but that’s about all it’s got going for it. ‘Little James’ isn’t much better, one of the first songwriting attempts by vocalist Liam, and it shows. Though the sentiment is nice – it was written for his step-son and modeled after John Lennon’s ‘Beautiful Boy’ – it’s a bit of twee, manufactured poignancy that sounds like it would have been better suited on a children’s music compilation than an Oasis album. ‘Gas Panic!’ was written at a time when Noel was kicking his addiction to Valium, which he was taking to kick his addiction to cocaine, and seems to bathe and swirl in a drug-induced haze, while the disorientating lyrics – “My family don’t seem so familiar / And my enemies all know my name / And when you hear me tap on your window / Then you get on your knees and you better pray” – only add to the confusion. The album picks up a bit with ‘Where Did It All Go Wrong?’, but only in terms of musicality; lyrically, it’s about a mess of a life by living in the fast line, something which the Gallagher brothers knew a lot about at that time. Incidentally, it’s sung by Noel, making it all the more personal for him; however, it’s not all that great, and by this point in the album, the overt psychedelic undertones become a little tiresome.

The more homespun ‘Sunday Morning Call’, sung and performed entirely by Noel (except for drums), is still rooted in swirling psychedelia, with a shimmering Mellotron and disembodied angelic backing vocals driving home the emotion. This is probably the best track on the album, along with ‘Go Let It Out!’, while ‘I Can See A Liar’ sees the band returning to their loud rock ‘n’ roll sound, and though it doesn’t quite achieve the same heights as their past songs, it’s still good to finally hear the band awake from their psychedelic slumber and turn up the guitars. The album ends with ‘Roll It Over’, another epic slice of psychedelia; while it’s a pleasant enough number, it sounds too deep rooted in ennui to really take it to another dimension. Which can really be said about a lot of Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants, in all honesty; it certainly sounds like an album that Noel had wanted to make, instead of trying to make a more mainstream album that recaptured the success of their first two albums. In that respect, he gains points, but one wishes he had written something a little more interesting and musically appealing.

Essential listening: Fuckin’ In The Bushes, Go Let It Out!, Who Feels Love?, Sunday Morning Call