THE GOOD(ISH) REVIEW Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (Sour Mash)

By Laura Crapo

This album makes me want to become a producer even more than I already wanted, which was very much so. Sound separation being my least favourite aspect of recordings – on this record I’m feeling the studio vibe. You can smell the coffee, you can hear the wife bitching on the phone through the headphones while you wait for the engineer to press record. Drummer’s doing his laundry across town while singer is doing vocal tracks in a foamy, woolly room with double pane windows. Does music live here? Does music collide into itself and become better for it? Does a lover do kissing in one room, heavy petting in another room and take magazine breaks and phone calls in between. No, it happens in the hallway before you got to your destination. Things break and fall. Favourite clothes are ruined. What is left is disarray. The same disarray that is virgin forest. Perfect placement. Why can’t recordings be like that? Noel Gallagher deserves a good recording experience. He loves music. The playful endings and beginnings suggest another album of similar sounds stretched to their definition. I’ll happily produce an album for him for free to liberate him from controlled bondage of the super studio.

I love solo albums because you can then go back and attribute magic to previous albums where it’s due. And you get insight into the individual’s temperament. Justice is served. Phonies exposed. Genuis isolated and admired. Solo albums are the best.

So now I’m picturing being producer for this re-recording of the album. If Noel Gallagher loves The Beatles then why not do his album in four-track? It’s possible his label is forcing his hand in what producer and studio is used, and what a final mix sounds like. Does Picasso have a manager do the final brush strokes? Fuck that.

Track-by-track rundown

Everybody’s On The Run (Seal)
Dream On (awesome)
If I Had A Gun … (sweet)
The Death Of You And Me (Elliott Smith)
(I Wanna Live In A Dream In My) Record Machine (great) Makes me want to hug him cause he’s being so sweet.
AKA … What A Life! (I like this one but I want him to sing it like Morrissey or The Fall)
Soldier Boys And Jesus Freaks (life is so complex now in 2011, a Kinks-style critique of suburbs seems too easy and outdated. If it’s a love letter to The Kinks, just make the lyrics “I love you Kinks”)
AKA … Broken Arrow (If the girls he dates are like angels, he’s lucky, even if they’re not straight shooters. Even the pace is lighthearted. How sad is he it didn’t work out … maybe not super sad, eh? Reminds me of a cold-hearted songwriting ex)
(Stranded On) The Wrong Beach (speaks of his adorable male vulnerability)
Stop The Clocks (Seal, Brian Eno)

This album makes me like him more cause he’s a pretty optimistic and sensitive dude. But people – don’t get in the way of Noel making a sexy album in which we can hear his raw power. No fucking coffee breaks. Sorry for swearing.

Related posts:
REVIEWED IN PICTURES Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (Sour Mash)
THE BAD REVIEW Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (Sour Mash)

by Laura Crapo