Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
Songs from the Great White North...

One of the great dilemmas related to the musical history of the Gallaghers that no one has yet understood: on what basis are songs discarded from various albums?

Anyone familiar with the history of the Oasis knows (and will agree) that many times the b sides are the true gems that make the difference. Similarly, here are four tracks excluded from Noel's first solo album, presented here in the form of an EP dating back to 2011.

They belong to the tracklist of the singles AKA... What A Life!, Dream On, The Death Of You And Me, and If I Had A Gun. The songs are very musically distant from each other, and experimentation into other territories is preferred over the strictly Gallagher style of mid-tempo rock songs.

For example, I'd Pick You Every Time strongly recalls old-school folk with the omnipresent banjo and the poignant romanticism it displays. The Good Rebel is the most Beatles-like, and I would add optimistic, with a chorus praising the rain and smiling at the world. The collaboration with producers Amorphous Androgynous (aka The Future Sound Of London) leads to the creation of Shoot A Hole Into The Sun. More than a remix, it is a biting and blurred reworking of If I Had A Gun that now seems to have come out of A Storm In Heaven by the Verve. The real ace in the hole (and unfortunately little proposed by the songwriter himself, a great pity in the opinion of the author) is Let The Lord Shine A Light On Me. From the top of a mountain, a man's plea who feels like a drop in the ocean to find peace with himself, distant strings, and few notes (those who appreciated the style of Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants will notice a strong reminiscence with Gas Panic).

Since the early 2000s, his attempt to bring changes and evolve the Oasis as a self-assured band led to the psychedelia of the already mentioned Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants, to the revival of some sounds of the seventies that is evident in Dig Out Your Soul. Despite the "loss" of Gem Archer (another important proponent of this), he continues to do what anyone with an instrument in hand should do: play whatever the hell they want outside of any artistic fences.