Oasis: Don't Believe The Truth

Herald rating: * * * *

To say that Don't Believe The Truth is Oasis' best effort since their breakthrough first two of a decade ago isn't an overstatement.

It just reminds you how much albums three to five - Be Here Now, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, Heathen Chemistry - sounded like a band floundering to recapture that initial spark. And one failing to make themselves relevant to a world - the one outside Britain - that wasn't interested in the battling Gallagher brothers and their rotating line-up of ring-ins.

It's doubtful that Don't Believe the Truth will do much for their momentum anywhere in the world. In Britain, they've become just another rock institution, one forever associated with the good old days of the mid 90s Britpop explosion. And without them, British rock is doing very nicely, thank you.

So it would be easy to dismiss the Gallagher's sixth album as just another collection of their magpie melodies strained through their particular meat'n'potatoes delivery, with Liam hollering over the top in that Lennon-Rotten way of his.

Actually, sometimes it is - but it has enough variety, stylistic curiosities, and decent bombast-free tunes to rise high above being the usual Oasis plod.

Once again, they are stealing from all over: Mucky Fingers is the thump of Velvet Underground's Waiting for the Man dragged screaming down Carnaby St; Lyla does to the Rolling Stones' Street Fighting Man what Oasis used to do to the Beatles' back catalogue; Guess God Thinks I'm Abel owes its verse to the Fabs' I Wanna Be Your Man; and Part of the Queue is close in shade to the Stranglers' Golden Brown.

But rather than derivative, it all sounds surprisingly inspired.

Perhaps it helps that Noel isn't dominating the songwriting as much. On a couple of tracks brother Liam makes up for his embarrassing efforts of earlier albums, while guitarist Gem Archer and bassist Andy Bell contribute the album's most rock-solid moments - especially Bell's opener Turn Up the Sun and the psychedelic splash of Keep the Dream Alive which reminds of his previous outfit Ride.

As well as more heady pastoral psychedelia (see also the gorgeous waltz-time Love Like A Bomb), it manages to cram in Hives-ish garage rock (The Meaning of Soul) and Noel-sung Kinks-ish music hall-pop (The Importance of Being Idle).

It's about three albums too late, of course, to prove anything.

But the only thing the surprisingly good Don't Believe the Truth shares with its woeful immediate predecessors is the now-traditional crap title. Label: Sony/BMG