Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds

And after the arm, the mind. After the voice, the brain. After impulsiveness and rock 'n roll, clarity and genius.

Noel Gallagher is now a songwriter. Yes, his solo debut bears the name of a band (taken from a Jefferson Airplane song), but that’s the essence. The elder Gallagher knows how to write. He has always demonstrated it, churning out anthem after anthem in nearly twenty years of his career. Even if the latest works of Oasis were no longer exclusively the work of the forty-four-year-old Mancunian in terms of songwriting.

This time everything falls back on his shoulders again, for the first time since 1997's Be Here Now, perhaps the most underrated British rock album in history. Even though, back then, something was there to ‘cover’ him anyway, namely, his brother Liam’s voice, the unmistakable seal of a band that, for better or worse, has become part of modern English rock history.

And there it is, the true dilemma: everyone wondered what the younger brother would do without the elder brother’s pen, and the answer (fairly above expectations) came with Beady Eye, who can rock 'n roll, and found in Andy Bell a songwriter who is certainly not on the level of The Chief, but still knows his stuff. But Noel without Liam? Would classics that last through time like Wonderwall, Live Forever and Don't Go Away have been the same without the poetic aggression of the quarrelsome Mancunian?

Let’s be clear: Noel has an excellent voice, far from being annoying or ugly, but certainly not extraordinary. And here's the right move, crucial to make this High Flying Birds soar (indeed): tailor-making an album for himself. And so it is, the level of this solo debut is astonishing, maybe even (but time will tell) on the levels of the first two unsurpassable super-classics branded Oasis. Otherwise, there’s no explaining the audacity to open the album with an absolute masterpiece on the melodic front with "Everybody's On The Run"; where everyone would have placed a track like this at the closure, good old Noel plays it at the opening, making it clear that the game is heavy, and that the extremely high expectations from then on will be perfectly justified.

Let the journey begin. A rich and varied journey, with numerous facets, accompanied by The Chief’s ever-inspired pen. There is no lack of the distinctive britpop soaked in Kinks, Beatles, and The La’s that Our Man now writes with a cup of tea in one hand and a newspaper in the other, see the first single "The Death Of You And Me", "Dream On", very close to things already expressed by Oasis in the old "She’s Electric" and "Digsy’s Dinner", or "AKA... Broken Arrow", which sounds as if the Duran Duran of the Wedding Album had taken over Wonderwall. "If I Had A Gun..." follows the mega-ballads that made the Mancunian band’s history, but on the same ground, the two "rejected" ones from the previous Oasis albums' sessions, namely "(I Wanna Live In A Dream In My) Record Machine" and the now legendary "Stop The Clocks", leave jaws dropping, which certainly doesn’t disappoint expectations and rockets into the top twenty of the best things written by Noel Gallagher.

Elsewhere, however, something more daring is ventured; "AKA...What A Life!", the new single, with its hammering piano beat and Our Man’s falsetto interlude, seems to have come out from a crate of old Hacienda. "(Stranded On) The Wrong Beach", on the other hand, is an unusual, fun, and amused rock blues.

And now? Hard to say. The paths of the brothers seem, however, destined to remain separate. Beady Eye will soon record their new album, tentatively scheduled for summer 2012. Noel already has his second album in the works, already ready, in close collaboration with Amorphous Androgynous, also due within a year. For now, both have demonstrated that they have merit, even separately. Although the game, predictably, has been easily won by the brainy elder brother.

Besides, class is not water, and it never will be.

KEY TRACKS: "Everybody's On The Run", "The Death Of You And Me", "(I Wanna Live In A Dream In My) Record Machine", "(Stranded On) The Wrong Beach", "Stop The Clocks"