Noel Gallagher – Blue Moon Rising Review

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On a psychedelic high as his brother now is, Noel Gallagher picks his way through a handful of EPs which stun fans with short-term memory loss. He did all this but better on Who Built the Moon?. Such is the life of being in a rock and roll band – doomed to repeat the same sound for several years as you receive plaudits for differing from your work. The constant problem for Blue Moon Rising and the rest of the EPs in this gamble of trying to make more money from four releases than one big package is a reliance on dated styles. Remixes, extended versions and five-track releases may have spluttered away in the 1990s but the times have changed. It makes Blue Moon Rising feel more like a novelty than anything else.  

Even then these allusions to psychedelic stylings are replaced by a drum machine and a danceable opening more akin to the grinding and hollow horrors Pet Shop Boys were providing than anything else. Blue Moon Rising, for about thirty seconds, is exciting. Gallagher warns of a storm brewing through this track but never seems to relent to the winds which could blow him toward quality. Yet it never comes and soon the chimes of Christmas bells ring out on the follow-up Wandering Star. It is a real drop in the middle-of-the-road quality set out by the title track, but at least it marks a change of pace as Gallagher continues to clutch at straws. All of it sounds very fine, but waking up with some mounting pressure on the brain may make the dullest of tones sound acceptable. 

Wake yourself up with a bit of fresh air, two coffees and a few spins of Monopoly Go and you soon realise the literal bells and whistles drown much of Gallagher’s lyricism out of Wandering Star. Perhaps it is why it can be listened to, though not more than once. Come On Outside may as well be the follow-up track to the hit children’s show Come Outside though without the spotted plane and dog – it has as much weight as the back-and-forth present on programming where viewers are taken to see how toothpaste tops are made. Gallagher struggles to mount much of an emotional charge – and when he does it sounds like the rejected pockets of Oasis material which would barely scrape onto a B-Side. 

Continue on with the two remixes and it just about hammers the final nail into this coffin of EP songs. The Reflex Version doubles the time of Blue Moon Rising yet does half as much with the material present while the 7” Mix is a redundant observation, slicing off thirty seconds as though a radio station or 7” single cannot fit the whining guitar work Gallagher so often provides. It is likely the best of his EP efforts this one and even then, falls particularly short of where he should be. Consistent with This is the Place, where the title track is a solid piece of work, but the follow-ups are empty shells, it seems Gallagher choosing to do a series of EPs is more because a full album of this stuff would have tanked, rather than a desire to spruce up a dying form of release. Either way, there they are, and they do very little. Council Skies has already brushed these pieces to the side.