This morning I awoke to find an e-mail from Noel Gallagher in my inbox.<\/p>\n
To be fair, the e-mail wasn’t from Gallagher personally. It was from his website’s online store. But the “From” field said “Noel Gallagher,” so for a few pre-caffeinated moments I could have believed that the rock star himself had deigned to notice me.<\/p>\n
In reality, the e-mail was to let me know that the newest single from his forthcoming album was available for download. Which I promptly did.<\/p>\n
The A-side, to use old vinyl terminology for an mp3 download, was “If I Had a Gun…” I’ve listened to this song more times than I’d care to admit — first, it was upon a radio station’s website about six weeks back, then a few weeks later I got it as a free download from Gallagher’s website, though I don’t remember why or how I did. (last.fm says, currently, 35 times, but that’s vastly lowballing it. Vastly.) (ETA<\/b>: The reason I got “If I Had a Gun…” early was that I pre-ordered the full album from Gallagher’s website, and as a bonus I received that song early.)<\/p>\n
I wrote at the time that the song was released to the website: “‘If I Had a Gun’ is reminiscent of some of the work on [Oasis’] Dig Out Your Soul<\/i>. The song conveys a sense of unrequited longing, and I find it unexpectedly haunting. The one quibble I have is that I feel it needs an orchestral swell.” The more I listen to it, the more I love the song. It starts out slow and gentle, with piano and acoustic guitar counterpointing each other, then forty-five seconds in an electric guitar comes in, and the sound builds. The lyrics tell an evocative story of an unrequited love, and when the song hits the chorus, there’s a shift in texture and the song becomes nearly transcendent.<\/p>\n
I thought it needed an orchestral swell. It doesn’t.<\/p>\n
The B-side, “I’d Pick You Every Time,” is a fun little country-esque acoustic ditty. It’s a silly thing that reminds me of some of Paul McCartney’s frivolous moments on “The White Album.” It’s fluff, but fun fluff. I can’t think of a similar moment in the Oasis canon.<\/p>\n
As I mentioned recently, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds<\/i> is one of the albums I’m most looking forward to this autumn<\/a>. I’ve heard the album in full. It streamed in two halves on Gallagher’s website over the last two days, and it’s wonderful stuff. I cannot wait to have the shiny plastic disc in my hands.<\/p>\n And who knows. Given my interest in hypothetical Beatles albums<\/a>, maybe I’ll put together a hypothetical Oasis playlist for the album after Dig Out Your Soul<\/i>. Or maybe I should just let Beady Eye’s Different Gear, Still Speeding<\/i> and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds<\/i> stand on their own. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This morning I awoke to find an e-mail from Noel Gallagher in my inbox. To be fair, the e-mail wasn’t from Gallagher personally. It was from his website’s online store. But the “From” field said “Noel Gallagher,” so for a few pre-caffeinated moments I could have believed that the rock star himself had deigned toContinue reading “On Noel Gallagher’s New Single”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[150,4116],"class_list":["post-6066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-noel-gallagher","tag-oasis","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}