(Epic)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Assuming it's been a while since you gave it much attention, you've no idea how amazing and cathartic this album sounds in 2011. Its unapologetic "more is more" guitar-wash sneer proves there's more than the Arcade Fire way to combat alt-rock irony: Oasis captures something explosive, overheated, and maniacal. Despite their fascinatingly cranky interviews, which always existed in the alternately lowbrow and brilliantly nobrow Beavis and Butt-Head universe, the Gallagher brothers' music seldom suffers from any actual pretension, least of all on their debut album. This record is the sole entry in Oasis' catalog that really bothers to put them up as a band; the string arrangements and the irksome resistance to growing the hell up would all come later. In the moment, it's still about feeling good and fuck off if you don't go for that. But who wouldn't? The rare person who isn't already won over by the time the hook in "Live Forever" hits will melt then; if they don't, their actual affection for rock music deserves to be called into question.
Beatles comparisons are only valid in the sense that a number of Oasis' melodies and chord structrues are clearly derived from any number of stoned Abbey Road listening parties; the majority of the band's Fab borrowings are gigantic clichés which have been appropriated by many before Oasis. Still, the influence is integral, but so are those of glam rock and shoegaze, less celebrated ingredients in the Gallagher pot. As easily as "Live Forever" and "ShakerMaker" invite Beatles chatter, "Columbia" recalls My Bloody Valentine, "Supersonic" New York Dolls, "Married with Children" and "Digsy's Dinner" Bowie, and so on. But this LP is to those luminaries what Raiders of the Lost Ark is to 1930s serials: a summary and magnification. Oasis picks up the loose ends and aural ideas of their influences and pushes them, squeezes them until there's nothing left. So "Rock 'n' Roll Star" and the immortal "Cigarettes & Alcohol" sound like '70s glam the way it exists in your head, the way it looks in pictures; "Live Forever" is a Beatles singalong maxed out into blissed-out oblivion, lacking every bit of the Beatles' mystery and subtlety but upstaging them for sheer chutzpah and button-pushing pleasure, and "Supersonic" is the brashest psychedelia the '60s were never audacious enough to produce. Noel Gallagher's songs and production amp up all of his obsessions until they overflow, gleeful in their intensity. Few '90s rock records are more satisfying.
The band itself takes a backseat to Liam's larger-than-life vocals, but Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs' lead guitar licks are the secret magic trick, and a prime reason for the constant Beatles callbacks. Still, it's Liam we hear the most, and he's just sprightly enough here to remain charming for the full listen. Even by the time of the naked, bitter closing track "Married with Children" -- a pretend-adult ode to man-child behavior that's truly contemptible and brilliant -- he is still uncovering nuance far beyond what he'd be displaying in even his better performances later on. And no cut is at all weak, but the hits ("Cigarettes & Alcohol," "ShakerMaker," "Live Forever," "Supersonic," "Slide Away," "Rock & Roll Star") leap out irresistibly; other classics like "Columbia" and "Digsy's Dinner" tease and expand the sound of the singles in the perfect fashion. What a difference, in comparing this with the band's pre-Creation recordings, a gimmicky production style and some excellent songs end up making.
Luck played far more of a role in Oasis' career than in the Beatles'; a combination of god knows how many label and corporate and radio forces made them, briefly, one of the biggest bands in the world, a title shared by few others in the '90s. Fleeting though that was, Oasis made good on their crucial immaturity by banking on sonic refinement while their peers all concentrated on trying to craft a unique enough voice to become, well, a fraction as popular as Oasis. It wouldn't be unfair to say they deserved the gold medal less than (in particular) Blur, but the calculation of Definitely Maybe is blow-away masterful. Putting all your best ideas on the debut album is an unenviable position to put yourself in, but few bands in history generated more excitement from simply not holding back. Perhaps the flaws of every subsequent release were built into this first one. For now, Oasis is a gut-level guitar band with appalling pop sense; they believe nothing else matters, and it's easy to wish they'd never changed their minds.
Of course, then, Oasis never issued another record this good, and certainly not one from so perfect a moment. Definitely Maybe captures them young, hungry, and obnoxious, at the perfect crossroads between the wall-of-noise Creation Records sound of their demos and the Britpop sneer they magically affected and came to forever define. Oasis never had Blur's wit and creativity or Radiohead's ambition, but they were brilliant at being self-fulfilled rock stars -- rock stars before the fact, even -- and at sounding like an audio miracle. To hear Definitely Maybe now is to feel yet again that innocent teenaged urge to bust out and go swimming in a shamelessly cartoonish portrait of adult reality in which compromise is futile, relationships are for a laugh, and the radio is always on full-blast.
[SEE ALSO:]
The Early Years (1992-95)
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