Oasis occupy probably one of the strangest spaces in British rock's glitterati. They sell out vast arena tours in minutes, recently celebrated a lifetime achievement award bestowed by the otherwise psychotically youth revering New Musical Express, and any release is unquestionably a music industry EVENT. And yet. Whatever the build up to the release of Dig Out Your Soul, the nagging doubts persist, especially for those of a certain age who still vividly remember their visual debut, a bunch of dickensian upstarts literally electrifying The Word with a now legendary performance of Supersonic.
Eighteen months later - despite a pantomine spat with Damon Albarn - they had become the symbolic face of Britain's mini cultural renaissance, simoultaneously co-opted by Tony Blair's machivellian New Labour who used the brother's mix of working class rebellion and bare faced nostalgia to support their romanticised fiction of a new cod-socialist utopia. Musically though they appeared unstoppable' the release of What's The Story (Morning Glory) demonstrated a maturity and songwriting craft hitherto unappreciated by fans and critics alike.
And in amongst the ubiquity of "Wonderwall" being everywhere in 1995 - everywhere - and two platinum albums, they later had time to throw out The Masterplan, the period's b-sides and outakes collection which in quality terms comfortably sits in any list of the decade's most pivotal releases.
This, though, was a band based upon a highly spontaneous fratricidal relationship, one which had to grow up in public and that in two years had catapulted the protagonists from the grim council estates of Manchester to a world of supermodels and every other rock and roll irritation, including of course the tedium of drug paraphernalia. Since the musical disaster that was 1997's Be Here Now - the sessions for Dig Out Our Soul was the band's first sortie back to the (in)famous Abbey Road studio since - Oasis have somehow shrunk a little, preferring to rely on a fanbase which defines hardcore and making music which at it's heart has progressed little in terms of agenda and which
leaves them open to accusations of rejected ambition. They've written great songs since of course, "Lyla", "The Importance of Being Idle", "Little By Little" - even the ugly Standing On the Shoulders of Giants gave us "Who Feels Love" - but like the boy in the bubble, they remained ferociously resistant to infection by their environment.
Three years on since Don't Believe The Truth, Dig Out Your Soul arrived with the brothers in what amounts (For them) as an oxymoronic charm offensive; front covers of Q and NME, in depth interviews (Q's piece ran to an over-engineered 50 pages - a month later, the review awards the record an underwhelmed 3/5). Even the effusive but far less quixotic sidekicks Andy Bell and Jem Archer are wheeled out. You feel with the sole purpose of underlining just how egalitarian the collective are these days. Bell And Archer make their arguably superfluous contributions here as in previous collections; the latter's effort "To Be Where There's Life" is a bass-heavy guitar free chant, complete with an necessary sitar, whilst Bell wisely absconded to the control room during the recording of his strictly drone by numbers "The Nature of Reality".
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