After almost 90 minutes on stage, Noel Gallagher ended his long-awaited Bristol Sounds 2022 performance with a chorus of boos from the Harbourside crowd. And it wasn’t because he played seven Oasis songs at Lloyds Amphitheatre, either - it was simply because he brought up the subject of football.
‘This one’s for all the Man City fans,’ grinned Gallagher, before launching into AKA…What A Life!, a track from his first solo album. The mere mention of his beloved Sky Blues certainly riled some of his fans who pantomime-booed the 55-year-old singer.
Of course, it was all good-natured banter, which is what Gallagher would expect from such a crowd of devotees, some of whom wore Bristol City shirts as a reminder to the Mancunian star where he was. They had certainly forgotten the reference to Man City by the time Gallagher and his band High Flying Birds launched into the final encore of Don’t Look Back In Anger, an Oasis favourite that had everybody singing along, phones and pints aloft.
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Gallagher made his fans work for the reward of seven Oasis songs. The first nine songs of the set were all tracks from his solo career but he knows exactly what he’s doing.
This was an intelligently curated set that started with the psychedelic Fort Knox, complete with its memorable refrain of ‘you gotta get yourself together’ and slowly built up towards a carousel of old Oasis favourites. It’s 11 years since Gallagher released his first solo album and he has plenty of great songs in his back catalogue - luckily for the Bristol crowd, he dusted most of them off.
Part of a short tour, this was effectively a warm-up for Saturday when Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds play Glastonbury Festival’s Pyramid Stage. They play just before his hero Paul McCartney so the world will be watching.
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As Gallagher motored through the nine solo songs, the fans gradually left the bars and food trucks and headed down to the stage set against a backdrop of the MShed and Wapping Wharf. For much of the performance, the sky was clear blue as the sun slowly set across the Harbourside on a warm, summery evening tailor-made for such events.
It may have been a mid-week school night but that didn’t stop fans - some with their kids - from enjoying themselves. There was a distinctly summer holiday vibe from where I was standing in the swell of fans at the front.
She Taught Me How To Fly and Wandering Star teased fans into singing along but it was a mass singalong for Dead In The Water that fired the starting pistol of this show. It was followed by seven back-to-back Oasis classics, starting with Little By Little, The Importance of Being Idle and Whatever.
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By now, the light was fading and fans were illuminated by the blue and red stage lights. Across the water, hundreds of people sat on the quayside listening to the show for free.
Just as Gallagher and his band struck the first chord on Wonderwall, a solitary paddleboarder with a flickering head torch glided through the water behind the stage. Somewhat surprisingly, the singalong for Wonderwall was overshadowed by those for Half The World Away and Stop Crying Your Heart Out, after which Gallagher and the band left the stage.
Returning with blistering versions of If I Had a Gun and AKA…What A Life, both from his first solo album, there was only really one way this show was going to end and the fans weren’t let down. The sight and sound of thousands of people singing their hearts out to Don’t Look Back In Anger, some swaying with pints, others with arms around friends, is not something to take for granted.
Bristol Sounds is back after a two-year Covid-enforced hiatus and this first night of six shows was a perfect reminder of what we’ve all been missing. If the likes of Paolo Nutini tonight (June 24) and Elbow tomorrow (June 25) can get the Harbourside crowds going as much as Noel Gallagher, it’s going to be a fantastic few days - as long as the headliners don’t mention the football, that is.
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