Oasis, Dig Out Your Soul
Official Release Date: October 6
The Verdict: In an interview in the new Spin magazine (not yet online), Noel Gallagher attributes the decline in quality of Oasis’ post-1997 material to the fact that he stopped using cocaine. Surely just as much of a factor, though, is the increasingly abundant — and terrible — songwriting of his brother, Liam.
Dig Out Your Soul, the band’s seventh album which hit the Internet on Friday, contains five pretty great songs (the previously leaked “Shock of the Lightning” and “Falling Down” are the best ones, but we like “The Turning” nearly as much), all of them by Noel. There are also two not-bad throwaways by auxiliary members Andy Bell and Gem Archer and three Liam-penned stinkers (actual lyrics: “If I’m to fall, would you be there to applaud or would you hide behind the law? / Because if I am to go, in my heart you grow, and that’s where you belong”) that make you wish Oasis would change their minds and release this thing as a seven-track EP. A democratic split of the songwriting duties may have helped these guys survive longer than any of their Britpop brethren, but we definitely liked them better when they were a Noelocracy.
