Star wars

A battle-scarred Oasis bite back

by Charles Taylor

"Do Y'Know What I Mean," the single that opens Oasis's third album, Be Here Now (Epic, in stores this Tuesday), begins with a sound that's familiar if you've seen any movies about the Blitz. It's the drone of an overhead plane preparing to drop a bomb. In the song's video, Oasis perform in the ruins of a razed building while military helicopters fly overhead in formation and land to disgorge an army of the faithful: ravers and rockers ready for combat, assembling to hear a send-off message from their commander. And there's himself at the head of them all, Liam Gallagher in wrap-around mirror shades and combat parka, the pop star as Il Duce. What's strange is that for so grand a gesture, the message is closed-off, insular: "All my people right here right now/They know what I mean" (emphasis mine).

Given that (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (Epic) went quadruple platinum, you have to think the number of people who know what Oasis are talking about isn't limited to a select few true believers. Maybe the Gallaghers -- singer Liam and brother Noel, the band's songwriter -- are saying that their true fans haven't been swayed by the bad press Oasis have accrued for rock-star behavior (snottiness, hostility, public feuds, Liam missing gigs). This isn't the first time Oasis have suggested that the bond between a band and their audience could defeat the naysayers. But the defensive tone here is completely different from that of "Live Forever" (from their first album Definitely Maybe). "Maybe you're the same as me/We see things they'll never see," Liam Gallagher sang in that song. There was something touching in the way those you-and-me-against-the-world lyrics held out a promise: stick with us and together we can achieve something glorious. Now that Oasis have gotten their share of glory, Be Here Now offers up the tinny anthem "All Around the World" (it even gets a reprise) with "All around the world . . . Tell them what you've heard/We're gonna make a brighter day."

Oasis have often said they want to be the best rock band in the world. They're not. They've proved themselves a pretty damn good one -- a band capable of songs that stood up on the radio over the long run, songs whose pleasure expanded as they became more and more recognizable. But isn't this the wrong time to play poor misunderstood rock-and-roll band?

Be Here Now (doesn't that title sound like a John and Yoko slogan circa 1968?) is rank with rock-star self-pity, hurt that comes out in arrogance and boasting. Here's a sample of lyrics: "Sun in the sky never raised an eye to me" ("D Y'Know What I Mean?"); "Who'll put on my shoes while they're walking/Slowly down the hall of fame?" ("My Big Mouth"); "I'll have my way/In my own time/I'll have my say/My star will shine" ("Magic Pie"); "They're trying hard to put me in my place/And that is why I gotta keep running . . . What did it cost you to wear my crown?" ("I Hope, I Think, I Know"). Occasionally a piece of self-doubt creeps in -- "Tomorrow we'll be cast away" -- or a fantasy of escape from pop success -- "Take me away cos I just don't want to stay."

It's tough not to get sucked in by the sound of Be Here Now, the booming drums and the bigness of the layered guitars. But that bigness isn't cumulative, the way it was on the title track of Morning Glory. And the length of the tracks is just as inflated. This is music conceived to be delivered from the stages of hockey barns, while audiences pump their fists in the air and burn up the butane in their Bic disposable lighters.

It may be disingenuous, too, in the age of commonly accepted sampling, to complain that Oasis are lifting riffs ("All the Young Dudes" turns up in the background of "Stand by Me" and I swear they even crib from "Don't Look Back in Anger" on "Don't Go Away"). There's even something enjoyable about the arrogance of the thievery. What's worrisome here is the album's achieved joylessness. The guitars (what you might call an arena-scaled punk sound) don't just fail as a challenge or a threat, they fail to get to you on a basic pop level the way that, say, "MMMBop" does. They're like signifiers for rock guitar. You clutch on to the silly enjoyability of things like the pennywhistle in the title track. I suspect that if Oasis had come up with something as charming as "Wonderwall" for this record, it would have been dismissed as too slight.

What makes me feel so distant from Be Here Now is how little the audience appears to have come to mean to this band. "The Girl in the Dirty Shirt" is a love song to an unhappy girl the singer promises to make happy. He's trying to tell her that things will be all right no matter how bad they look. But when Liam sings, "To me it doesn't matter/If your hopes and dreams are shattered," I want to yell, "Did you wonder whether it matters to her?" Our hopes and dreams are what get us listening to pop music in the first place. If they don't matter to a band trying to be the biggest pop group in the world, is there any reason to listen to them?