Gig review: Noel Gallagher includes Oasis classics at Dublin show
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds headlined a gig at Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin. (File photo: Kate Green/Getty Images)
“I’m going to play a few more tunes that you don’t give a shit about,“ Noel Gallagher told a restless crowd at Glastonbury last year as he rolled out his solo material. I was expecting a similar reaction on Sunday night at Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Dublin, but the up-for-it crowd, were quite rightly enthusiastic about the material from this year’s rather excellent Council Skies record.
The selections from that album, determinedly placed at the front of the set, including the sinuous opening roll of ‘Pretty Boy’, the swirling ‘Open The Door, See What You Find’, the bass drum driven ‘We’re Gonna Get There In The End’, and – best of all – ‘Easy Now’ all prove that his winning way with a melody – even if the, odd time, it’s someone else’s – hasn’t deserted him just yet.
After that we get a ‘Best Of The Birds’ selection. The chorus of ‘We’re On Our Way Now’ is sturdy enough to build a house on, ‘In The Heat Of The Moment’ belies its cliched title with Na-na-nas and undeniable nod appeal, and ‘AKA… What A Life!’ had all us veterans ‘dancing’. ‘Dead In The Water’ might not be the greatest song ever written but once that’s out of the way, Gallagher breaks out the material from his other band.
‘Going Nowhere’ was originally the B-side to Oasis’ ‘Stand By Me’, a number two hit in 1997. The thing is, if someone told you it was another cut from the new album, you’d easily believe it because Gallagher is as good as song writer as he’s always been. ‘The Masterplan’ is a Gallagher masterpiece. He was so good back in the day that this was originally issued as the flipside to ‘Wonderwall’ and its cathedral-sized chorus is one of his greatest achievements.
‘Half The World Away’ and a rockin’ ‘Little By Little’ are lapped up with equal acclaim but it’s the 1-2 combination he finishes with that truly justifies the ticket price. ‘Live Forever’, dedicated to Sinéad O’Connor, is a thing of timeless beauty, and ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ is like shooting fish in a barrel with a bazooka. Everyone in the audience seemed to have their arms around someone, singing along and smiling, and you can’t really ask for more than that.
Oasis will likely reform one of these days for a tour that’ll make the recent scrum for Coldplay and Taylor Swift tickets look like very small potatoes indeed. In the meantime, the Noel Gallagher show rolls on and a very good show it is too.
Earlier, the show had been opened by Happy Mondays. Back in the 1990s, if you’d told anyone, including the band themselves, that we’d be seeing Happy Mondays giving it out on an Irish stage, or any stage, in 2023, they probably would have laughed in your face before breaking down with a chesty cough brought on by two much candle burning. The Mondays didn’t just light said taper at both ends, they crushed it up and snorted it, grinning like Cheshire cats who just won the lotto.
Against all conceivable odds, they crafted a masterpiece with 1990’s Pills ‘N’ Thrills And Bellyaches and they wisely stick in the main to material from it as they kicked off a value for money triple bill in the salubrious surroundings of the Royal Hospital grounds in Kilmainham.
Poor auld Bez, the man who normally provides a visual focal point defying the laws of thermodynamics as a perpetual motion machine, was having teenager trouble and so didn’t make it but replacement vibe master Alfonso Buller gave us some good moves. Rowetta was in fine voice, and Shaun Ryder, still smirking like the man who’s holding the big bag, was great sport, ad-libbing his way through an impossibly groovy set led by some marvellous interplay between the drums and the bass.
Primal Scream also gave a decent account of themselves. Bobby Gillespie is still the yellow pack Mick Jagger who is to singing what I am to brain surgery and if a note ever wandered into his head there’s a good chance it would be shot for trespassing.
As a front man he is mathematically uncharismatic with a constant puss on him like a child at a checkout whose mother has just said no to a bag of sweets. That being said, the band including five backing singers in glowing white outfits, laid it out in impressive fashion. ‘Big Jet Plane’ isn’t even half a song, but ‘Loaded’ and ‘Movin’ On Up’ are still irresistible.
