Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
Album: Chasing Yesterday
Label: Sour Mash
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.noelgallagher.com

"I believe in Yesterday" sang a band that both brothers Gallagher hold in high esteem and let's face it, both are pretty comfortable in the land before the Now. That's no bad thing for the past has everything to teach us about the present and a fair bit about the future, so fill your boots, understand that time is a continuum and come back with something that'll enliven the moment.

Chasing Yesterday is possibly an ironic title designed to bait critics, irritate cynics and, just as likely as not, get right up his kid brother's nose… that's if 47-year-old gentleman rockers still view younger siblings as kids.

Noel's second post-Oasis album is made with a slightly different musical line up than the first, but otherwise picks up the baton and runs off with it in slightly more interesting directions. It's a showcase of solid, earnest, righteous songwriting, quality musicianship and production. It also exercises Noel's (divine?) right to astound and amaze just enough to tempt us older hands back in for another go round the mulberry bush.

Oh and Johnny Marr guests on the closing track, the stupendous piano and bass workout that is Ballad of the Mighty I, so the record's already well and truly fine by me.

It opens with Riverman, a defiantly plain sailing anthem that speaks to Noel's preferred musical company and even makes a feature of the sax solo, the inspiration for which he has credited to Morrissey for playing him Brian Protheroe's long lost 70s hit Pinball on a big night out in LA. Next up, the album's lead single, In the Heat of the Moment didn't exactly tear up trees on its release, but neither did it unsettle the faithful, which has to be a consideration. The Girl With the X-Ray Eyes is a by-numbers lighter-in-the-air interlude before Noel gives both barrels in the nuts-out rocker Lock All the Doors, a song from 1992 that essentially foreshadows Morning Glory

The Dying of the Light is OK and if again it sounds like comfortable ideas being safely reworked - they're good ideas so why not? The album's first indication that we are still in the company of one of this country's pre-eminent contemporary songwriting talents comes with the soul-flecked gumbo of swamp rock and woozy psychedelia that is The Right Stuff, its slinky sax refrains and female vocals throwing off the revisionist mood of what has gone before.

The vibe is continued in While the Song Remains the Same. Leaving its dreary title with obvious Led Zeppelin connotations aside, the tune rolls out after an expansive, almost epic intro that suggests its composer has been availing himself of more than his share of glorious sun ups and sun downs. Blissful.

In time it gives way to the loose-limbed leather-trousered raunch of The Mexican, an old school rocker in the best possible sense. Then, before the hook up with Johnny Marr sees us on our way, we get a reminder of Noel's trademark way with a terrace anthem in the shape of You Know We Can't Go Back. It's the sound of Pastor Gallagher addressing his flock in the language they understand best - don't knock him for it, nobody does it better.

Chasing Yesterday is not made to change the course of popular music, it's not even made to push its creator particularly hard, but that won't get in the way of its many merits. It's an everyman record, an honest, deliberate distillation of the things that keep Noel Gallagher, much like the rest of us, coming back for more. Bang a gong.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk