Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds - Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds

(Sour Mash)

Given that Noel Gallagher hasn’t made a truly vital album since 1995 and his brother has already unleashed the underwhelming Beady Eye upon us, expectations perhaps aren’t stratospheric for the solo project the elder Gallagher has been promising virtually since Oasis emerged.

He isn’t anything like the underdog here, but perhaps the relative lack of fanfare works to his advantage. All the usual ingredients are included – the sweeping All Things Must Passisms of ‘If I Had a Gun…’; the string-addled retro melodrama of ‘(I Wanna Live in a Dream in My) Record Machine’; the pastoral diet psychedelia of ‘Stop the Clocks’; the obsession with bracketed titles – but Gallagher seems freshly unencumbered by ‘voice of a generation’ responsibility. It’s like he’s just been told it’s OK to be middle-aged, and it suits him.