2023-09-05 06:53:22
Six years following the mixed one Who Built the Moon? sweep Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds back with a surprisingly unimpressive album: this one Council Skies are strangely vague places of longing.
Noel captures the basic idea behind his fourth quasi-solo album „…going back to the beginning. Daydreaming, looking up at the sky and wondering regarding what life might be…and, following this vague image in his mind’s eye, he recorded music that is melancholic and is also characterized by memories of his own childhood, just as the songs he created during the pandemic want to be understood as a comforting balm for the soul.
Wo We’re Gonna Get There in the End as a wonderful standalone single that is already too tangibly contoured for the regular album, and actually also the tempo-setting one, built with Johnny Marr on an electro beat that switches to Kraut Pretty Boy as a too penetrating yeah weakness (nevertheless winning in the context) leads you on the wrong track Council Skies The typical Noel songwriting is built on a warm 60s and 70s-affine atmosphere I’m Not Giving Up Tonight pleasantly half-awakening with a thoughtful acoustic folk flair and dream-walking, indulgent string arrangements, rhythmically mostly working according to well-known Chris Sharrock patterns (i.e. often stomping) but thanks to the romantic, dreamy sound, every traditional rock feeling is rather padded in hippie-esque nostalgia, remaining modest and gentle, preferring to remain reserved even in the theoretically pompous scenes.
Songs like the completely decelerated reverie Dead to the Worldwhich caresses from its ethereal arrangements and gentle harmony changes to the magically uplifting chorus that throbs on velvet paws Open the Door, See What You Find have something hymn-like regarding them, they articulate it in the character of Council Skies but in a way that is never quite tangible, jingling as an airy anachronism of slightly swaying fantasies, which in the case of calmly comforting indulgence Trying to Find a World That’s Been and Gone Pt. 1 (which begins more like a not completely formulated interlude) or the elegiac, gripping one Easy Now may seem underwhelming at first glance, but gradually it becomes apparent that Noel and his band – alongside guest Marr and drummer Sharrock, bassist Russell Pritchard, keyboardist Mike Rowe, Gem Archer (guitar), and co-producer Paul “Strangeboy” Stacey, who contributes an ambient solo in the last-mentioned song – instead of the hits, this time he opted for relatively inconspicuous catchy tunes, which sometimes sneak out of your thoughts fleetingly.
Noel sings lines like “I can lend you a dream/ ‚Til we meet once more/…/ But if love ain’t enough/ To make it alright/ Leave me dead to the world/ ‚Cause I’m sleeping/…/ I’m so tired/ Let these be my last words“ and shows a conciliatory gentleness.
When subtly danceable grooves emerge like in the title track, they do so in a vaguer manner Doves-Association in just as subtle a way as if Think of a Number as an amalgam of Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes, The morning (Gorillaz), The Cure-Vibe, U2’s Staring at the Sun and Oasis‚ Falling Down pleases. In the end, perhaps it is enough to symbolize this secret grower of an album that is at times bubbling along with latent indifference, as the closer finds a sublime majesty, but does not let it flow through his fingers in a focused manner, but rather non-committally. Which in a certain way also has a frustrating followingtaste of informality, but the fourth album High Flying Birds also gives it its own, seductively inscrutable character with a lot of substance beneath the dozing forms.
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