Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds | ||
| Allmusic Biography : Having left Oasis the previous year after a typically turbulent backstage row with brother Liam at Manchesters Heaton Park, the eldest Gallagher siblings first official foray into a "solo" career took off in 2010 with Noel Gallaghers High Flying Birds, featuring the talents of Gallagher, former Oasis keyboard player Mike Rowe, Lemon Trees drummer Jeremy Stacey, and percussionist Lenny Castro. Cut from the same arena-sized, melodic Brit-pop cloth as the band he helped bring to prominence in the early 90s, the High Flying Birds released their debut single, "If I Had a Gun," in August 2011, followed by an eponymous, full-length debut in mid-October. It reached number one in the U.K., also performing well across the globe. In 2014, the single "In the Heat of the Moment" preceded the release of the High Flying Birds second album, Chasing Yesterday in 2015. The band embarked on a promotional tour for the record throughout the next two years. A remix album entitled Where the City Meets the Sky: Chasing Yesterday: The Remixes saw release in the fall of 2015 and featured reworkings by the likes of Andrew Weatherall and 3D of Massive Attack. Gallagher teamed with producer David Holmes for Who Built the Moon?, a 2017 album that revived his love of noisy neo-psychedelia. | ||
 | Album: 1 of 9 Title: Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds Released: 2011-10-12 Tracks: 12 Duration: 54:14 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Everybody’s on the Run (05:31) 2 Dream On (04:29) 3 If I Had a Gun… (04:09) 4 The Death of You and Me (03:29) 5 (I Wanna Live in a Dream in My) Record Machine (04:23) 6 AKA… What a Life! (04:24) 7 Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks (03:22) 8 AKA… Broken Arrow (03:35) 9 (Stranded on) The Wrong Beach (04:02) 10 Stop the Clocks (05:05) 11 A Simple Game of Genius (07:18) 12 The Good Rebel (04:24) |
| Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds : Allmusic album Review : Oasis always thrived on tension between the Brothers Gallagher -- not the interpersonal squabbles but their conflict between instinct and discipline. Liam personified the former while Noel flew the flag for the latter and their distinct, differing definitions of rock & roll continued to churn out exciting rock & roll until the end, when Liam’s cavalier attitude toward work proved the final straw for the elder Gallagher. Unsurprisingly, the first solo projects from the two reflected this dichotomy: Liam’s Beady Eye is all big-legged swagger; Noel’s High Flying Birds is tasteful, mannered craftsmanship. Noel often griped how Liam would prevent Oasis from doing anything unexpected, thereby raising expectations of left turns on High Flying Birds, but the little brass flourishes peppered throughout the record don’t stop the album from playing like a succession of variations on “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and “The Importance of Being Idle.” Craftsman that he is, Gallagher does come up with several keepers -- the Oasis carryovers “Stop the Clocks” and “(I Wanna Live in a Dream in My) Record Machine,” “If I Had a Gun...,” “Everybody’s on the Run” -- but his success ratio is no greater than it was on the last two Oasis albums, where his best tunes were buttressed by good ones from his brother and Andy Bell. Take the highlights from Beady Eye’s Different Gear, Still Speeding and add them to the highlights from High Flying Birds, and you’ll wind up with a balanced, better record than either individual LPs -- and in a direct competition the elder Gallagher comes up just a little short, as he’s missing anything resembling rock & roll, skimping on quick tempos and loud guitars. | ||
 | Album: 2 of 9 Title: Songs From the Great White North... Released: 2012-04-21 Tracks: 4 Duration: 18:29 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 The Good Rebel (04:20) 2 Let the Lord Shine a Light on Me (04:10) 3 Id Pick You Every Time (02:06) 4 Shoot a Hole into the Sun (07:53) |
 | Album: 3 of 9 Title: iTunes Festival: London 2012 Released: 2012-09-21 Tracks: 8 Duration: 35:13 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Everybody’s On the Run (05:15) 2 If I Had a Gun... (03:57) 3 D’Yer Wanna Be a Spaceman? (02:43) 4 (I Wanna Live In a Dream In My) Record Machine (04:22) 5 AKA... What a Life! (04:23) 6 Don’t Look Back In Anger (04:58) 1 Everybody’s On the Run (05:14) 1 AKA... What a Life! (04:16) |
 | Album: 4 of 9 Title: Chasing Yesterday Released: 2015-02-25 Tracks: 10 Duration: 43:52 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Riverman (05:41) 2 In the Heat of the Moment (03:29) 3 The Girl With X‐Ray Eyes (03:20) 4 Lock All the Doors (03:41) 5 The Dying of the Light (05:11) 6 The Right Stuff (05:27) 7 While the Song Remains the Same (04:16) 8 The Mexican (03:46) 9 You Know We Can’t Go Back (03:46) 10 Ballad of the Mighty I (05:15) |
| Chasing Yesterday : Allmusic album Review : Opening with a minor chord strummed on an acoustic guitar somewhere off in the distance, Noel Gallaghers second solo album, Chasing Yesterday, echoes Oasis second album, (Whats the Story) Morning Glory? -- a conscious move from a rocker whos never minded trading in memories of the past. He may be evoking his Brit-pop heyday -- "Lock All the Doors" surges with the cadences of "Morning Glory" even as it interpolates David Essexs "Rock On" -- but it amounts to no more than a wink because Gallagher knows hes two decades older and perhaps a little wiser as well. Certainly, Chasing Yesterday is the work of a musician very comfortable with his craft. Like the first album from High Flying Birds -- a largely anonymous group of pros who make no attempt to steal the spotlight from their leader -- it moves deliberately, never rushing and rarely rocking, preferring to find pleasure in majesty instead of hedonism. Where 2011s HFB kept things a shade too calm -- its reserve almost seemed like a rebuke to the messy id of Gallaghers brother -- Chasing Yesterday occasionally threatens to actually rock, delivering that signature wall of guitars on the aforementioned "Lock All the Doors," mustering up a bit of old-fashioned, cowbell-driven glam boogie on "The Mexican," and quickening the tempo on "You Know We Cant Go Back," a piece of incandescent pop that plays as a resigned companion to "Step Out." Better still, the self-styled epics -- which include the first single "In the Heat of the Moment" and closing "Ballad of the Mighty I," which features grace notes from a guesting Johnny Marr -- pulsate with quiet color, as does "Riverman," a signature piece of stately late-period Beatles pop that wouldve been drained to grey on HFB. Here, "Riverman" breathes and sighs, taking a moment to slide into a saxophone-accentuated guitar solo straight out of a pre-punk 1976, and this masterful flair is a testament to the control and focus Gallagher displays on Chasing Yesterday. Hes not racing after the past, nor is he afraid to seem floridly fussy: hes reveling in his ascendency to the position of one of rocks wise old men. | ||
 | Album: 5 of 9 Title: Where The City Meets The Sky - Chasing Yesterday: The Remixes Released: 2015-09-25 Tracks: 11 Duration: 1:10:01 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Ballad of the Mighty I (Beyond the Wizards Sleeve Re-Animation) (07:12) 2 Ballad of the Mighty I (Beyond the Wizards Sleeve Re-Animation instrumental) (07:11) 3 In the Heat of the Moment (Andrew Weatherall remix) (07:52) 4 Riverman (Beyond the Wizards Sleeve Re-Animation) (06:55) 5 Riverman (Beyond the Wizards Sleeve Re-Animation instrumental) (06:51) 6 The Right Stuff (Psychemagik remix) (06:51) 7 The Right Stuff (High Flying Birds in 3D - version 1) (05:32) 8 The Right Stuff (High Flying Birds in 3D - version 2) (04:39) 9 The Girl With X-Ray Eyes (David Holmes rework) (05:27) 10 The Girl With X-Ray Eyes (David Holmes rework instrumental) (05:27) 11 In the Heat of the Moment (Toydrum remix) (05:58) |
| Where The City Meets The Sky - Chasing Yesterday: The Remixes : Allmusic album Review : Despite all his bluster about real rock & roll, Noel Gallagher came of age in Manchester during the 80s -- of course he has affection for dance music, particularly acid house. Where the City Meets the Sky is the first album released under his name to truly capitalize on this element of his lineage, something that remains hidden in plain sight despite his singing lead on a Chemical Brothers single in 1996. Noel enlists several artists of his own vintage -- Andrew Weatherall, who helped sculpt Screamadelica, comes aboard, as does David Holmes -- but he also turns a chunk over to Beyond the Wizards Sleeve and 3D, with Psychemagik and Toydrum doing a track a piece. Everybody toys with only a handful of songs -- "Ballad of the Mighty I," "In the Heat of the Moment," "Riverman," "The Right Stuff," "The Girl with the X-Ray Eyes" -- but this gives the remixes enough raw material to shape. Usually, the most attractive moments are the ones that graft a heavy beat onto the measured originals -- Weatheralls "In the Heat of the Moment," Psychemagiks "The Right Stuff," Toydrums "In the Heat of the Moment" -- but the rest creates a nicely textured, hypnotic trance thats not only enjoyable, it reinforces how Gallagher is savvier than he sometimes seems. | ||
 | Album: 6 of 9 Title: Who Built the Moon? Released: 2017-11-22 Tracks: 12 Duration: 48:46 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Fort Knox (03:57) 2 Holy Mountain (03:54) 3 Keep on Reaching (03:24) 4 It’s a Beautiful World (05:17) 5 She Taught Me How to Fly (05:02) 6 Be Careful What You Wish For (05:40) 7 Black & White Sunshine (03:41) 8 Interlude (Wednesday Part 1) (02:10) 9 If Love Is the Law (03:25) 10 The Man Who Built the Moon (04:28) 11 End Credits (Wednesday Part 2) (02:27) 12 Dead in the Water (live at RTÉ 2FM Studios, Dublin) (05:21) |
| Who Built the Moon? : Allmusic album Review : Its hard to blame Noel Gallagher for opting for stability over adventure once he disbanded Oasis. After spending nearly 20 years battling his brother Liam, he needed to take things easy, and if his solo records -- Noel Gallaghers High Flying Birds (2011) and Chasing Yesterday (2015) -- were a little too calm, consider it a consequence of navigating himself out of chaos. Despite achieving solo success, Gallagher seemed to have a nagging voice in the back of his head that hed ceded the psychedelic ground he claimed at the height of Brit-pop. That voice began to beckon when he first launched his solo career, leading him to cut an album with trippy production team Amorphous Androgynous in 2011 but, unsatisfied with the results, he scrapped the project. Gallagher finally figured out how to reconnect with the part of him that sang with Chemical Brothers in 2017, when he teamed up with fellow 90s survivor producer/composer David Holmes for Who Built the Moon? Opening with the Technicolor pulse of "Fort Knox" -- a swirling near-instrumental that deliberately recalls "F***** in the Bushes" -- Who Built the Moon? announces itself as a noisier, busier record than either of its predecessors but by the time the stomping "Holy Mountain" kicks in, its clear that Gallagher and Holmes are engaging in a decidedly retro notion of the future, one that looks back to the 90s looking back at the 60s. This has been Noels stock in trade since the start, but during Oasis heyday, hed undercut his conservatism by making a great, bloody racket and writing melodies that sliced into the subconscious -- calling cards he neglected in his bid from maturation. Who Built the Moon? happily restores these elements to the equation, marrying it to his refined sense of songcraft. Gallagher may not precisely serve up surprises here -- Holmes adds some attractive, quirky flair on the margin, but hes working with sounds Noel endorsed in the first act of his career -- but there is a certain rush hearing him opt for glam, psychedelia, and candied pop instead of respectable strumming. Once that initial rush fades, the album is still satisfying due to its impeccable execution. Noel knows how to construct a sturdy song and Holmes knows how to dress them up in flashy clothes, and the combination results in Gallaghers best album since splitting up Oasis. | ||
 | Album: 7 of 9 Title: Its A Beautiful World (Remixes) Released: 2018-04-21 Tracks: 4 Duration: 00:00 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify AlbumCover | 1 Its A Beautiful World (Andrew Weatherall Vocal Remix) (?) 2 Its A Beautiful World (Andrew Weatherall Dub Remix) (?) 3 Its A Beautiful World (Mike Pickering Graeme Park Hacienda Mix) (?) 4 Its A Beautiful World (Mike Pickering Graeme Park Hacienda Instrumental Mix) (?) |
 | Album: 8 of 9 Title: Wait and Return Released: 2019-04-13 Tracks: 3 Duration: 00:00 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify AlbumCover | 1 She Taught Me How to Fly (The Reflex Revison) (?) 2 Keep on Reaching (The Reflex Revision) (?) 3 Black & White Sunshine (Richard Norris remix) (?) |
 | Album: 9 of 9 Title: Black Star Dancing Released: 2019-06-13 Tracks: 5 Duration: 26:41 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify AlbumCover | 1 Black Star Dancing (04:22) 2 Rattling Rose (03:34) 3 Sail On (04:02) 4 Black Star Dancing (12" mix) (04:39) 5 Black Star Dancing (The Reflex Revision) (10:04) |