Noel Gallagher lacks the stage presence of his brother

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds                                   SSE Arena, London 

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If the Gallagher brothers could stand each other they would be playing Wembley Stadium. As it is, they’re both doing OK, filling arenas, having No 1 albums and proving that plenty of people still miss Oasis.

Liam can just about replace Noel with jobbing songwriters. Noel faces the bigger challenge, coping without Liam’s bolshie charisma. 

In a classic Gallagher manoeuvre, he doesn’t even try: he just stands there like a session man.

Noel faces the bigger challenge than his brother, coping without Liam’s bolshie charisma

Noel faces the bigger challenge than his brother, coping without Liam’s bolshie charisma

He’s not even spotlit, which seems modest but hardly rock ’n’ roll.

The wit he shows in interviews goes sour on stage. When the fans yell ‘No-el, No-el’, he snaps: ‘You’ve got to chant my f***ing name louder than that.’

He opens with too many tracks from the new album Who Built The Moon?, led by Fort Knox, which isn’t easy to get into.

Only the glam rock of Holy Mountain, derivative but delightful, shines out of the sludge. Things look up when Noel turns to Oasis with Little By Little and The Importance Of Being Idle.

IT’S A FACT

Gallagher’s rebellious streak was revealed early in his life, when he was expelled from school aged 15 for throwing a bag of flour over a teacher.

They’re not much better than the solo stuff, but they are much bigger, amplified by the crowd. 

That was Oasis’s secret: their beery singalongs turned the punters into speakers.

We get two more such pairings, carefully curated, with Half A World Away heralding Wonderwall (weary but still warming) and Go Let It Out teeing up Don’t Look Back In Anger (all the greater since it became Manchester’s anthem).

Noel knows his best work. If only he could produce more of it – and bury the hatchet with his brother.

 

Joan As Police Woman                                            Royal Festival Hall, London 

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Five albums in, Joan Wasser is taking the slow road to stardom – but heading the right way, as her biggest London gig so far showed. 

Once a violinist, she has become a fearless frontwoman with a sensual sound.

Her new album is called Damned Devotion, and she plays it in full, as if determined to live up to its name. 

Five albums in, Joan Wasser is taking the slow road to stardom – but heading the right way

Five albums in, Joan Wasser is taking the slow road to stardom – but heading the right way

This seems a shame: The Classic, from 2014, is surely too good to be shelved. But What Was It Like, a piercing tribute to her father, is equally memorable, and her remake of Prince’s Kiss is breathtaking.

joanaspolicewoman.com

ALBUM OF THE WEEK 

Plan B            Heaven Before All Hell Breaks Loose         Atlantic, out now 

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Last time we heard from Ben Drew, six years ago, he was the Poet Laureate of Broken Britain, listing the London riots, crack addiction and prison life among his specialised subjects.

Since then, Drew has been transformed by fatherhood. Plan B’s fourth album opens with a declaration of gratitude – ‘my life changed forever on the day you were born’ – and ends on a related theme: ‘You came along and saturated me with love.’ 

To soundtrack his emotional watershed, Drew dispenses with the hard-edged hip-hop of his last album, Ill Manors, favouring instead sleek street-soul and sweetly skewed reggae.

Plan B’s fourth album opens with a declaration of gratitude – ‘my life changed forever on the day you were born’

Plan B’s fourth album opens with a declaration of gratitude – ‘my life changed forever on the day you were born’

Not that he’s gone soft, exactly. The frenetically funky title track, embedded with sirens and screams, is a thrilling blast of righteous anger. 

Guess Again is a squally commitment to fight injustice ‘to the bitter end’. Grateful, on the other hand, sounds like a Rag ’n’ Bone Man off-cut. 

Drew’s impassioned vocals and erudition remain impressive, but Heaven… takes a fraction too long to say a fraction too little. It’s by no means hell, but glimpses of paradise prove fleeting.

Graeme Thomson

 

THIS WEEK’S CD RELEASES

By Adam Woods 

Janelle Monáe                      Dirty Computer                            Warner, out now 

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On her third album Monáe persuasively lays claim to Prince’s subversive, saucy side. But what makes it so fun, flamboyant and deadly serious is Monáe’s own charisma, her brilliant future-pop and her regally confident message of sexual and racial pride

On her third album Monáe persuasively lays claim to Prince’s subversive, saucy side. But what makes it so fun, flamboyant and deadly serious is Monáe’s own charisma, her brilliant future-pop and her regally confident message of sexual and racial pride

 

Frank Turner                      Be More Kind              Xtra Mile/Polydor, out now

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Turner’s sweaty folk-punk has sometimes been a bit too pleased with itself. But here, as well as including an electronic pop flavour, he highlights creeping fascism on 1933. Songs like the title track and The Lifeboat come from a seam of elegant, literate acoustic pop

Turner’s sweaty folk-punk has sometimes been a bit too pleased with itself. But here, as well as including an electronic pop flavour, he highlights creeping fascism on 1933. Songs like the title track and The Lifeboat come from a seam of elegant, literate acoustic pop

 

Gaz Coombes                                                     Caroline International, out now                                        World’s Strongest Man

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Against a theme of vulnerability and the tiresome nature of alpha-male nonsense, Coombes conjures up feline grooves (Walk The Walk) and pulsing krautrock (Deep Pockets), all while never making the same sound twice

Against a theme of vulnerability and the tiresome nature of alpha-male nonsense, Coombes conjures up feline grooves (Walk The Walk) and pulsing krautrock (Deep Pockets), all while never making the same sound twice



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