What do you get if you take Noel Gallagher out of Oasis? To answer that question we sat through the live offering of Beady Eye, lil’ bro Liam Gallagher’s vehicle for his defiant return to the indie pop-rock scene after Oasis’s acrimonious breakup in 2009. We didn’t have to sit there long. At less than an hour this was more punk-gig length than pop A-list length, and defiant once again in face of the fans, the band played no Oasis songs. And let’s face it, the people in the crowd were Oasis fans, not Beady Eye fans. As their icon strutted on stage, clad in something like a cross between a parker and Chairman Mao’s hand-me-downs and mumbled into the mic, chants of “Liam, Liam” filled the arena and cups of beer flew through the crowds.
All material came from the band’s 2010 album, ‘Different Gear, Still Speeding’. Most of the tunes sounded like thrashy rehashes of the Beatles’ early back catalogue – their influence apparently even stronger minus Noel. Even the back projection behind the band, psychedelic lava lamp style imagery along with the song titles, ‘Four Letter Word’, ‘Bring The Light, Roller’, usefully projected in the style of a comic book strip as each was played, seemed like an attempt to connect with the past and nostalgia rather than look to the future.

The whole hour seemed like a strange parody of what the band used to be. The problem is if you take Noel Gallagher out of Oasis you get some decent musicians who can’t write a decent tune. This was the band that became so massively popular largely because of its anthemic sing-along classics, without the anthems or the sing-along. All filler, and no killer. Which is exactly what Liam seems to be doing: filling his wallet and killing some time until the real band gets back together.

Photos by Matthew Hodson www.matthewhodsonphotogrpahy.co.uk
Words by Lewis Merdler