Powering through pigs in blankets at the kitchen table after a lengthy day – the best thing to do is power down. Shut off your brain with some memorable bit of music. Or Oasis. Don’t Believe the Truth, like preceding mundanity on Heathen Chemistry, was a school trip essential. A bust-up CD rattling out the plain toast music of a band in decline. Their freefall was not aided by their lacking attempts to stick firm to a style which found itself as dated as the men behind it. Still, do not believe what goes against nostalgia. Oasis is and forever will be a band who staved off the horrors of the real world by masquerading as The Beatles – something Liam Gallagher continued with Beady Eye. Don’t Believe the Truth is disastrously tiresome. Try and take the pair seriously after hearing the word “soul” objectified and removed from any possible meaning after this.
Turn Up the Sun starts with all the tambourine faff associated with a band focusing their efforts on a penultimate effort. Turn down the rain makes as much sentimental sense as this thoughtless opener. Zone out and you soon find yourself battered down by the distant tones and slightly echoed drums of Lyla. There it is. Brag all you like about the tune-oriented lad culture of the first two records, at least they could hold an anthemic rise. Whether that should ever be the aim is neither here nor there, at least Oasis’ previous efforts had a momentum which could carry them into the relevant spheres of big-band appeal. Don’t Believe the Truth has a strop at the high point and fails to make good on anything put forward. Lyla sounds like a cheap and lazy kick-on of the instrumental tones on Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, as most Oasis songs not in the C or Dm chord range do.
At least The Importance of Being Idle is worth a listen. So that is how this song made its way into playlists from a decade ago. Move on, though. Don’t believe the hype. Rip off themselves, their influences and those who had the chance to spin off and away from this turgid, unresponsive mess. Twee acoustics and a clang to the head are all Don’t Believe the Truth can off. Annoying little ditties like Love Like a Bomb lack the explosive calibre Oasis needed to maintain a fashionable or even interesting style. Their dependence on lyrical structure here is laughable and a worrying sign of where the band found themselves.
Do they even know The Meaning of Soul? Oasis has none of it here and they can deploy all the sudden springs of harmonica they like. It does little, if anything. Allusions to infighting on Guess God Thinks I’m Abel are neat but plain and make no major changes to follow-up track Part of the Queue. It sounds more like a middling High Flying Birds number than anything else, though this may show where Noel Gallagher’s head was at the time. He and Liam are both looking for a way out of this short and simple record, though they do not find it in time and instead are stuck with grizzled and repetitive electronic works.
Find a different job. One that doesn’t demand a full understanding of the English lexicon. Or writing at all because the piece I just attempted to read was so very badly written it hurt my ears.