After holding out admirably/foolishly for several years on the back catalogue which will not be denied, Liam Gallagher has split his second best band Beady Eye, stuck his own name on an album of new material and embraced the old Oasis tunes which made him the truculent rock’n’roll star he is.
Result: a Number One slot for the prophetically titled As You Werealbum, and a speedily sold out arena gig greeted with hungry hysteria from an intergenerational audience of dads reliving their youth and sons enjoying their first taste of a bruising rock show.
Liam Gallagher, Hydro, Glasgow ***
Gallagher doesn’t do restrained. Everything was turned up to eleven, from his salmon pink parka to his forced vocals to his driving rivalry with elder brother Noel. A rough and ready Rock’n’Roll Star was met with a shower of pints and some coloured flares, and the energy escalated on Morning Glory, enough to sustain the crowd through the segments of the show which concentrated on the strictly sub-Oasis solo material.
A horn section were completely wasted on Greedy Soul, conducted at such thudding volume that any arrangement subtleties were lost in the mix. Paper Crown, passing for a fragile ballad, exposed the vulnerabilities in Gallagher’s voice after 23 years of having it, while the lovely Slide Away suffered for his pitbull delivery. None of this mattered a jot to the jubilant audience who voted vociferously with their loudest terrace holler to hear Live Forever over Wonderwall, unaware that the plan, in Gallagher’s new regime of generosity, was always to perform both.
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