Album Review: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Chasing Yesterday

Chasing Yesterday is an apt title for Noel Gallagher’s latest record, steeped in sounds we all too conveniently associate with him.

Which after all, is probably what you want from a Noel Gallagher album. We don’t expect him to reinvent the wheel, we want solid rock songs with an anthemic tinge and, though Chasing Yesterday delivers this in some respects, moments in it tend to fall flat.

Lead single In The Heat Of The Moment is the epitome of a Noel Gallagher tune: catchy chorus, singalong ready ‘na na na’s, a hint of strings to bolster a chugging guitar riff. It lives in the shadow of its predecessors on 2011’s self-titled record. There’s wistfulness in the lyrics of The Dying Of The Light when he says, “I was told, the streets were paved with gold,” even if he carries on to use every possible cliché in the space of three minutes.

Style sometimes overrides substance, see the truly nonsensical line “You want love like a kid on crack” on the otherwise rollicking The Mexican, or The Right Stuff bordering on Café Del Mar jazziness with its smooth saxophone keeping company with softly harmonised vocals. It’s here that Gallagher starts to sound like a caricature of himself: surly, speaking in curling aphorisms that don’t necessarily mean anything once you dig a bit deeper. Yet there’s a comfort in the familiarity, it’s well-traversed terrain for Gallagher and fans aren’t going to be disappointed by more of it.