That Noel Gallagher and his High Flying Birds arrived on a flower-festooned OVO stage watched over by a cardboard cut-out of Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, propped behind the speakers, spoke volumes about what we should expect from their first show in the capital since headlining the summer’s South Facing festival. Like Pep, these guys have years of solid if unexciting performances to contend with, but when the moments of glory do come, they're unbeatable.
On the tour to promote his much-lauded fourth solo album Council Skies, you see, the elder ex-Oasis sibling has taken the same no-nonsense approach to constructing his setlist as he usually does towards voicing opinion on Glastonbury headliners. Discarding the standard tease-out-the-hits gig formula, he configured the show as a kind of drip-feed reward system showcasing his entire career in reverse. Sit through five new album tracks and he’d treat us to a batch of better-known solo material. Clear that, and it’s basically Oasis ‘til the bar runs dry.
Any Britpop diehards waiting out the new stuff in the pub, though, missed the night’s most ear-opening moments. Noel’s solo work has been outclassing later-years Oasis for some time, and the opening burst of Council Skies songs continued this impressive form, lacing tales of youthful Manchester dreaming with heroic chorus riffs, motoric momentum, pounding grandeur and, in the case of We’re Gonna Get There in the End, a Britpopian swing in the hip.
Granted, there was more colour and punch to the older solo tunes, with We’re On Our Way Now blossoming into a psychedelic gospel anthem and You Know We Can’t Go Back coming on like northern soul on steroids. And when Noel wrapped up a chest-swelling solo Dead in the Water and announced he was taking us back to the Nineties, a palpable thrill washed the room. “Has anyone heard of Stand by Me?” he teased, gruffly, “well this was the B-side…”
Having surrendered the bravado rockers to his brother Liam’s live set – bar a poignant and haunting rendering of Live Forever that honoured its advancing years – Noel nonetheless proved that even a set of Oasis deep cuts and acoustic ballads could storm an arena: a gloriously horn-drenched Going Nowhere; a bombastic, Beatledelic The Masterplan; a Half the World Away that turned the standing area into one massive, swaying group hug.
Little by Little expanded like a supernova and the closing Don’t Look Back in Anger was all the OVO Arena’s league wins come at once. In terms of shots on target, Gallagher did cardboard Guardiola proud.
