Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Dead to the World Review

His music certainly is. Noel Gallagher pieces together a track that lifts the acoustic, tender structures of other, better musicians of his class with Richard Hawley inflictions right there in the opening. It is not enough to move Dead to the World, Gallagher’s latest Council Skies single, anywhere of note. A toothless adaptation of bending over backwards for those he loves and the songs he writes. Introspective? Redundant? Possibly both for Gallagher, whose work on Dead to the World is a soppy string affair that sounds like it would slot into the closing notes of a Pierce Brosnan Bond feature. Isolating his voice and underscoring it with empty strings and simple acoustic notes does little to help or hurt. 

Thoroughly unconvincing work comes through Dead to the World because those who are seasoned with Gallagher and his thoughts cannot detach from the empty, soulless feeling his music brings. He mounts a track about figuring out his place and how he does not know where he has been, and if the interpretation is anything but vaguely personal riffs then it would have been a shock. Easy Now and Pretty Boy did much the same and were absolutely fine standards, expected solidity from a consistent, if dull, singer-songwriter. His singing, nor his songwriting, are of particular interest though. Sickeningly buttered up and simple tones of love not being enough. Not exactly the most dominant or entertaining of perspectives, but it is also a lacking emotional one that relies on projection toward its simple chord structure and tone than actual, raw sentiment. 

Roaring through over and over the same few lyrics, Gallagher musters up very little in the way of sincerity. These tracks feel as cheap as they did in the Oasis days, where lyrics were secondary to the feeling after a few Strongbow cans were necked. Now, Gallagher perceives himself as the touching underdog, the frontman with a heart of gold and a voice of silver. Dead to the World is achingly simple. Whichever pop-like dullard is currently top of the charts could have knocked this one out and hoovered up a hefty sum of cash. But Gallagher is perceived as a legacy artist now and will never hit that high again. Perhaps he is the underdog, dead to the world since he no longer enjoys the major success he once did. He has been eased out of phase like the rest of those greats he worked alongside. 

Overpraised and on the minds of even the passive fan because it is one of the more articulate tracks Noel has ever released. For a man that once wrote he was walking slower than a fired cannonball, Dead to the World can be celebrated for rarely putting its foot in its mouth. It still does. “Gonna write you a song / won’t take me long” certainly has precedence here. Nothing too detailed, nothing too formidable, but it didn’t take long at all for it to come together. Repetitive in its emptiness and moving in its self-adaptation should a listener feel the desire to project their own feeling onto broad tracks with a simple structure even Ian Brown would tut at. Gallagher leaves a miserably flat impression here, where his vocals are acceptable, his lyrics forgettable.