Great pop or rock songs tend to be progressive, powered by change or escape or desire, or an alloy of those impulses. Even nostalgia rock, which seems deeply conservative, is about wanting to escape into the past, a frustrated desire to reverse time. On his second solo album, Liam Gallagher does a lot of looking back. Singles Shockwave, One of Us and Once cannily evoke the endless psychodrama of his relationship with estranged brother Noel.
As always, Liam’s greatest asset is his astonishing voice, all yearning and defiance. Still, his songwriting has improved, possibly encouraged by the subject matter. If people still waved lighters at gigs, the orchestral pomp of Once would be this album’s great thumb-warmer, while bluesy Shockwave sizzles with Liam’s thrilling fork-in-a-world-of-soup sneer. The River is another highlight, borrowing the baleful crawl of peak Oasis for a convincing call to independent thinkers (“don’t believe celebrities/ or money-sucking MPs”).
Sadly, most of the new songs peddle tame, low-stakes nostalgia, swimming in cliches and drowning in sentimentality, as satisfying as trying to get relationship advice out of a cashpoint. Perhaps his third album should stick to songs about Oasis.
