Just kidding: Liam Gallagher's greatest pearls of wisdom

A recent binge-watch of Simpsons episodes led to the sharp conclusion that Nelson Muntz, Springfield's teenage miscreant-in-chief, reminded me a bit of of Liam Gallagher.

Like Muntz, Liam has established himself as resident school playground thug, with his swagger, faux menace and daft proclamations about, well, anyone. All he lacks is the high-pitched mocking "Ha-ha!" of his cartoon prototype.

But as Gallagher Junior today celebrates his 41st birthday,dealing with being kicked out of the family home by wife Nathalie Appleton in the wake of allegations that he fathered a child with a Rolling Stone journalist, What Would David Bowie Do? thought it would cheer up the whole miserable mess by reminding you of why, like José Mourinho, Liam is immensely quotable. 

So, here's Our Kid on…

Pete Doherty: "Needs a slap, and the sooner he gets it, the better."

and: "What does the word Libertine mean? Freedom! He's in the corner doing smack with a helmet on his head. There's nothing free about that. It's nasty."

Coldplay's Chris Martin: "I don't hate him. I don't know him, know what I mean? I just think he's a bit giddy. He ought to calm down, he isn't going to save the world."

And [Chris Martin]: "Looks like a geography teacher."

Ageing: "I've mellowed, but not in the sense of liking Radiohead or Coldplay."

Coldplay & Radiohead: "I don't hate them, I don't wish they had accidents. I think their fans are boring and ugly and don't look like they're having a good time."

Radiohead: "Them writing a song about a fucking tree [The King of Limbs]? Give me a fucking break! A thousand year-old tree? Go fuck yourself!"

Robbie Williams: "I'd like to fucking hang Robbie Williams onstage. What's he done to me this time? Nothing. He's just somebody I'd like to hang."

And: "[Robbie Williams] "He's a fucking drama queen. You make a crap album then want everyone to feel sorry for you. Tosser!"

Bono: "You see pictures of Bono running around LA with his little white legs and a bottle of Volvic and he looks like a fanny."

Mumford & Sons: "Everyone looks like they’ve got fucking nits and eat lentil soup with their sleeves rolled up. They all look like they live on the heath. Maybe that’s where they record. Everyone’s fucking Don McLean — far too many acoustic guitars, no style. They look like they shop at Oxfam."

One Direction: "I like them. Fair play to them. Why not, man? They haven’t got a fucking clue either. I met them at the Olympics and their heads were up their ar*es, but they’re harmless."

Florence Welch: "I’m not having anyone with ginger hair making music. She sounds like someone has stood on her foot."

Gorillaz: "Like three-year-olds’ music — worse than Steps."

Victoria Beckham: "She can’t even chew gum and walk in a straight line, let alone write a book".

Kanye West: "If I ever win any more fucking awards I'd personally invite him to get up and fucking take my award of me. I fucking tell you that... That was rude when he did that to that girl, that Taylor Swift. So yeah, give me an award and see where it goes. It will roll out of his fucking arse."

Muse: "Muse fucking scare me. They're like fucking creepy shit. But people like 'em. They at least play guitars, but when I hear his voice I'm like, Ah, fuck him."

Scissor Sisters: "Bright colours and fucking weirdos on stilts? I'm more entertaining than that shit."

Franz Ferdinand: "You look at [Alex Kapranos] and the singer from Right Said Fred. It's the same person! he's just gone on the Atkins diet and grown his hair."

Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day): "Fuck right off. I'm not having him. I just don't like his head."

La Roux: "No way, mate. She's got man hands."

On the Blur reunion: "I'm right into it, [because] it'll finish off the Kaiser Chiefs and put them to bed. There's nothing worse than a shit Blur."

Bloc Party: "They remind me of a band off University Challenge. Like they’re sitting on a panel."

Keith Richards & George Harrison (in 1997): "They're jealous and senile and not getting enough fucking meat pies".

Mick Jagger: "I don't think singers who start off singing should play guitar. It looks fucking stupid."

Amy Winehouse & Pete Doherty (as a couple): "I don’t give a fuck about her, I don’t give a fuck about the other dick and I don’t give a fuck about any of 'em".

Jack White: “The White Stripes? Fooking rubbish. School ties? At the age of 24? Fooking hell."

Ozzy Osbourne: "How come everyone thinks he’s great? He’s a bit of a fooking mong, if you ask me."

The Beatles-vs-God: "It's got to be being in The Beatles. When was the last time God made a decent record?"

Noel Gallagher: "Shitbag".

And so begins the great summer of music

That, if I'm very much not mistaken, is the sun in the sky. A long-lost friend offering a warm embrace. And to make things even more agreeable, it has appeared on the stroke of June.

Here in Paris, where until last week, coats, scarves and your own breath was still visible in the cold morning air, the sense of relief is palpable. Waiters once again have the opportunity to ignore even more customers, now that tables are being spread out on the pavements.

The beginning of June contains a more meaningful commencement for WWDBD? -  the start of the summer gig season.

Tonight it's the Stone Roses at La Cigale, one of those delightfully compact, turn-of-the century theatres near the sin spots of Pigalle.

Of course, it will be no Spike Island, and there's a good chance that at least one of the Roses will fail to turn up, such is the delicacy of their reunification. I doubt, that would bother tonight's crowd, as long as whatever band Ian Brown gathers together plays though the Roses' incredible two album.

The Roses never really took in France, so La Cigale will, tonight, have a distinctly British, beered-up, football ground vibe to it. Fellow expats - mainly in or approaching middle age - will be primate-dancing alongside Eurostar-hopping Brits amazed they can see the band up closer than they would in arenas across the Channel.

And then Tuesday it's the musical phenomenon of the last 24 months. No, not an evening of Gangnam Style, but Rodriguez, the 'Chicano Dylan', who disappeared in 1971 after releasing just two albums, only to be tracked down to his rundown Detroit home by two South African musos with a filmmaker in tow.

The resulting film, Searching For Sugarman, was one of the most moving and uplifting films I've seen in many a year. Discovering the enchanting re-released Rodriguez albums (and hopefully filling his criminally deprived coffers) has introduced me to a songwriting talent whose talent , both of his original time and relevant now. 

Whether or not Sixto Rodriguez can carry it off in the enormous shed that is the Zenith in Paris remains to be seen. But as an opportunity to commune with the nearest pop has got to the actual Second Coming, Tuesday should be an event to remember.

Two weeks hence and my first ever live experience of the band Smash Hits referred to always as "Ver Mode" - Depeche Mode, playing  the vast Stade de France.

The last gig I saw there was the Black Eyed Peas. Viewed from a corporate box over what would be, in its normal use, the half-way line, they could have actually been peas, such was distance to the stage. There is a law of diminishing returns when it comes to stadium concerts: when you find yourself staring up at the video screens more than looking at the small and indistinguishable figures on stage, you probably should have stayed at home.

The Peas, as I recall, were only visible from my box thanks to them wearing stage costumes illuminated by LED lights. I doubt that Bruce Springsteen will need such gimmicks to be seen at the same venue when he plays there on June 29.

He is The Boss for a very good reason: this is what he does. His concerts are four-hour marathons, celebrations of fist-pumping, denim-clad blue collar rock. He invented the modern stadium rock experience, despite what U2 might claim. Such venues take a rare talent to truly make them fill out, but my expectations are high for a long evening of the sound of working class New Jersey brought to a mixed used stadium on the northern outskirts of Paris.

Facebook/Bruce Springsteen/Jo Lopez

Into July and the live experiences continue with The Who, continuing the current penchant for bands to tour entire albums by bringing Quadrophenia in its entirety to the Palais de Bercy.

Written as a rock opera in the first place, it was almost designed to fill cavernous venues like this, although whether Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend can, even at their tender years, still give it the maximum R'n'B remains to be seen.

Anyone expecting the fireworks of The 'Orrible 'Oo's heydays is clearly mad, but after seeing them last year at the Paralympics closing ceremony, I'm going to be blissfully accepting of all but the most disastrous of performances. It's The Who after all. So shut up.

Nowhere near as deafening will be Hugh Laurie, who brings his affectionate and highly proficient take on jazz-tinged New Orleans blues to the Grand Rex theatre in Paris in July.

With two excellent albums under his belt - Let Them Talk and Didn't It Rain - he has already demonstrated just how accomplished a blues performer is on a previous tour. This is not actor indulging himself, but an authentic take on the live sounds that pour out of Bourbon Street bars any given night of the week, which should sound just as foot-stomping in the environs of a classic old Parisian theatre.

Over the last few years I've enjoyed some great evenings in Montreux's Stravinski Auditorium, the principal venue of the annual Jazz Festival. Solomon Burke, BB King, Jimmy Cliff, Noel Gallagher, Booker T & The MGs, Van Morrison, Naturally 7, The Crusaders and, probably, one of the best gigs I've ever experienced - Lenny Kravitz in a sweaty July night of rock and funk.

This year the festival will be without its charismatic founder, Claude Nobs, but it will go some way to make up for his tragic absence by featuring Prince on the weekend of July 13. While London's Hyde Park will be rocking to the Rolling Stones, What Would David Bowie Do? will be in the Stavinski Auditorium for the pocket-sized legend to deliver, what I hope will be a very special evening indeed - especially if it is anywhere near as good as his performance during The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame all-star tribute to George Harrison in 2008. Possibly one of the greatest solo guitar performances I've ever seen.

Joyeux Noel

Switzerland might be best known for expensive watches, freakishly punctual trains and abstinence from both war and the Euro (much the same thing, some might say), but in Montreux what stands out the most are white trousers. And conspicuously labelled outerwear. Oh, and while we're at it, suede loafers in every hue imaginable.

Montreux is one of those chic little Euro enclaves where everyone sports a year-round tan and dresses on the formal side of continental casual.

It is also gnawingly tempting to describe Montreux as a somewhat smug town on the already smug Swiss Riviera, but as I have effectively just done that, you may have already made up your mind about this community of 25,000 burghers on the shores of Lake Geneva. 

For two or three weeks each summer it is overrun by musical tourists, shelling out a generous quantity of Swiss francs to experience one of the great fixtures of the summer music calendar: the Montreux Jazz Festival.

Even though this event has been staged every July since 1967, there is still an air of bemusement among the locals as the town's railway station disgorges the newly arrived. Perhaps that is why, on my own arrival, clad conspicuously in board shorts and hoodie, I was asked by a waiting limo driver which band I was with.

© 2011 Lukas Mäder - Montreux Jazz festival Foundation

It is always amusing to see local conservatism disrupted each year by the infusion of a relatively modest number of music fans who come to celebrate some of the best musicianship on the planet.

When the charismatic Claude Nobs (right) founded the festival 45 years ago it was a product of the times. While never the free love wigouts that Woodstock, Monterey and Isle of Wight turned into, Montreux has endured all these years through Nobs' own passion for the event, for good live music and for the region (he was working as a local tourism officer when he staged the first festival).

Over the years, the festival has evolved from out-and-out jazz jamboree, replete with bearded patrons listening intently to noodly instrumentals, to a mainstream entry on the calendar. In the early days it was 'pure' jazz artists like Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald, along with fusion acts like Weather Report, Chick Corea, Return To Forever and The Crusaders, but as the festival has matured its range of acts has diversified with rock, hip-hop, blues, soul, funk, electronica, world music and, on Wednesday in particular, Britpop.

The double-bill of Bombay Bicycle Club and Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds brought to Montreux a confluence of the well-healed who frequent the festival each year and a solid sprinkling of English football fans and their significant others. Some might say "the chavs and the chavs not".

Coldplay redrew the blueprint for earnest young men, whom you might otherwise walk past in a pub, creating melodic rock, but the "Bicycle Club" are en route to carving out their own niche in the category with a decidely upbeat brand.

If nothing else, they will do extremely well out of guitar endorsements. The exchange of axes between roadies and vocalist Jack Steadman, guitarist Jamie MacColl, bass player Ed Nash and even touring keyboard player Louis Bhose looked like they had more Fenders backstage than a high street instrument shop. It was therefore quite understandable that backing singer Lucy Rose looked mostly embarassed when called into the spotlight: she was lacking any sort of stringed instrument.

"Tight" guitars are the key to BBC's sound, with Steadman and MacColl demonstrating the sort of high-necked interplay not seen since the electricity-sapping heyday of The Eagles or the Allmans.It's a cool formula: take a few parts of New Order (especially on Bad Timing), throw in the pop of Deacon Blue (Lights Out, Words Gone) and the vocal harmonies of Fleet Foxes (How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep) and then open it up to the aural expanse of a venue like Montreux's Igor Stravinsky Auditorium and you see a band who have got a very long future ahead of them.

Like Coldplay, Snow Patrol and others of their ilk, the BBC induce legs to twitch gradually as their show wears on. The Club's more youthful following - drawn from various points on the European compass and presumably by the band's appearance on the Twilight: Eclipse soundtrack - attempted half-hearted shuffles in the early part of the set, before the entire auditorium felt suitably warmed up by the time Beg came along for a more concerted frug.

With a solid following, BBC shouldn't go wanting for ticket sales, but it will, however, take more than a teenage following and a few mildly danceable tunes before they are headlining arenas on their own. And when they do, it will take a lot more stage presence. Chris Martin may not be Freddy Mercury, but he and his somewhat awkward-looking compadres can command an audience. There's no doubting BBC's musicianship, but their stagecraft needs a little more work.

As a stopoff for tours that encompass both modest theatres and megaseat arenas, the Stravinsky Auditorium provides a level of immediacy rarely enjoyed by star and fan alike. But that's the fun of the Montreux festival. This is no summer mudbath: unless heading off on their tourbuses, artists stay at the viciously well-appointed Montreux Palace hotel, directly across the street from the Stravinsky and the neighbouring Miles Davis Hall, the two main venues.

As a result,  it is not uncommon for the hoi-polloi to mix with the stars as they unwind in Harry's Bar over the road, a rare intimacy in a business where 'the talent' is usually fascistly protected by minders. Four years ago, my friend Klaus and I were sat two bar stools down from George Benson, with Grace Jones hovering unnervingly behind us as I indulged a cold one (and no, I don't mean Ms. Jones), while Quincy Jones turned up for the umpteenth time (we were convinced he was stalking us). It's an enjoyable symptom of the festival's close-quarters nature.

Which makes Noel Gallagher's appearance in Montreux even more incongruous.

For two decades the creative force of Oasis has progressed through the gears of audience size, scaling - after just six years - the dizzying heights of playing to 250,000 screaming fans over the course of two era-defining nights at Knebworth.

And now, here he is amongst just 4000 people, exchanging banter with punter Norman Flynn down the front, who appears to have the night's set list in front of him.

The Montreux debut of Noel Gallagher and his High Flying Birds may have been a "mistake", as the Mancunian joked amid a barrage of sarky comments about jazz being "shite" (and the ever-popular rock star riff from This Is Spinal Tap about "blues-jazz or jazz-blues?"), but coming midway through his first over solo tour, Gallagher gave as assured a performance fronting his own rock band as it is possible to give.

When he embarked on his tour to promote the fantastic Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (review - Brother Beyond), Gallagher - in an unusually modest moment - claimed it was odd to be the main focus of attention in a band, having spent the previous 21 years side-kicking his little brother. The fact that the senior Gallagher had played a few solo gigs before (e.g. for the Teenage Cancer Trust, not to mention stepping up during Liam's occasional AWOL moments), didn't seem to count.

Either way, in Montreux on Wednesday he looked as if he'd been starring in his own show his entire career.

Flanked by Scouse bassist Russell Pritchard, Atlanta-native Tim Smith on guitar, Mike Rowe on keyboards and Jeremy Stacey on drums (and sporting a Bonhamesque bowler hat and Droog boiler suit), Gallagher battled an annoying cough - the hangover from a cold that had made misery in Poland a couple of weeks ago - to plough effortlessly through High Flying Birds, some of its B-sides (like Let The Lord Shine A Light On Me) and Oasis crowd-pleasers like Supersonic, Half A World Away, Little By Little and Don’t Look Back In Anger (and no-one seemed to bemoan the lack of Wonderwall).

Like the album much of the set came from, it was a show of vigour interspersed by Gallagher's good natured bonhomie, a natural comic timing that only served to endear him further to a partisan crowd (albeit including a few slightly confused older patrons who may have been mistaken into believing Rory Gallagher had posthumously returned to the shores of Lake Geneva).

The Guardian can continue to churn out think pieces about the demise of guitar rock as much as it wants, but as long as Noel Gallagher is writing songs like The Death Of You And Me, all will be well in the world. Live, these things pick up an additional energy - the latter missing nothing in the absence of the trad jazz trombone of the album version.

AKA What A Life pounded away superbly, taking with it an edgier tone. Likewise Soldier Boys And Jesus Freaks, stepping securely away from its softer feel on the album and sounding more like the Small Faces tune it clearly aspires to being - and can justifiably claim to better.

At some stage in the future Gallagher may not have to rely so much upon the Oasis back catalogue for live material. Born into the stadium era, he has a natural gift for writing simple songs, based on simple melodies, which could fill the most chasm-like venue. Everybody's On The Run is one of them - opening the album but easily being capable of closing a show at the expense of more familiar anthems in the canon. If I Had A Gun is another. A love song, rather than anything mischievously directed towards "our kid", it sits alongside Wonderwall as a song you can snog to, sway your arms to or jig about blokishly to.

Playing the Montreux Jazz Festival might have been, for Gallagher, a slightly strange detour from the football crowd familiarity of his traditional beat, but this was no more of a sell out than his appearance Chez Blair for the then-prime minister's 1997 celebration of "Cool Britannia". His visit to the 10 Downing Street parlour was hardly in the same league of coked-out rock star faux pas as Bowie's apparent Nazi salute at Victoria Station or Clapton appearing to agree with Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" prophecy. And even if - as he semi-joked (and shortly before Claude Nobs presented him with a 10,000-euro Parmigiani watch as a thank you) this would be his only appearance at the festival, Gallagher has earned the right to be regarded as a performer worthy of taking his place amongst the illustrious Montreux alumni.

Over the years we've had no shortage of braggadocio from the brothers G, usually around the theme of their greatness; and while - for Noel at least - it may have been tongue in cheek, there should be no doubt that his is a unique songwriting talent. He may not be the most gifted guitarist, and his chord library may not extend much further than that of Messrs Parfitt and Rossi, but in his application of melody, tunesmithery and stage-filling, Gallagher can justifiably bear comparison to another north-eastern Englishman with a melodic gift. The one who recently turned 70. Yes, even him.

Brother Beyond

Once or twice in a generation, pop music generates a rivalry that has the press gnawing upon it until they get bored and move on. The fact that the rivalry was, probably, their creation in the first place is neither here or there, the scamps.

In the 1960s we had The Beatles and The Stones; 20 years later, it was Duran Duran in a battle of hairspray with Spandau Ballet. They were followed after the intermission by Simple Minds and U2, a bout clearly won by the latter who went on to meet Coldplay in an exchange of ideas about fair trade coffee.

Thankfully, with the exception of Tupac and Notorious B.I.G., few have ever turned really nasty (although there were rumours of an ugly backstage spat between Mozart and that pipsqueak Beethoven at Glasto '90. 1790.)

It is, though, unusual that a member of pop's great firmament should find themselves absorbed by not one but two rivalries in the course of their career. Lily Allen came close by issuing the pop princess equivalent of the closing time "come on then!" to Courtney Love and Katy Perry, but to my knowledge, only Noel Gallagher has been embroiled in a full-on, no-holds-barred rock'n'roll dust-up twice.

The first came to a head on August 14, 1995 when, through either disruptive thinking or unbelievable stupidity, Blur's Country House was released on the same day as Oasis appropriately brought out Roll With It. Being the height of the silly season the event was marked by being the lead story on a host of organisations customarily indifferent to such triviality. It even made the BBC’s 10 O'Clock News, with summer stand-in presenter John Humphries harrumphing with unease as he introduced that evening's 'fancy that?' piece on the affair.

Planted, not particularly deeply, within the Blur-Oasis rough-and-tumble was the British class obsession: Blur's lower/upper-middle class art college background was pitched into the contretemps, with Oasis - hailing from Manchester's hardened streets - a journalistic gift. For a year or so it made for mildy amusing copy, but the true outcome of the handbags between Blur and Oasis (which saw Liam Gallagher turning his wannabe school playground bully persona up to 11) was to mask the simmering sibling rivalry within Oasis itself.

Part of me wishes it had ended like that. It would’ve made a great headline: ‘Plum throws plum'.

The sparring between the brothers Gallagher maintained the band's reputation from the moment they first emerged in the early 90s until its bitter end in 2009. For a while you could be forgiven for thinking it was part of their schtick. 

Fast-forwarding through more than a decade-and-a-half of simmering fraternal discord, the eventual separation of Noel and Liam Gallagher, the spiritual heart of Oasis, came as no surprise to anyone. The denouement unfolded backstage at the Rock en Seine festival in Paris when a row about the junior Gallagher's Pretty Green clothing label led to him threatening his elder brother with, first a guitar, and then a piece of fruit. 

"On the way out he picked up a plum and threw it across the dressing room and it smashed against the wall," Gallagher Senior recounted at a press conference last July to announce his debut solo album, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. "Part of me wishes it had ended like that. It would’ve made a great headline: ‘Plum throws plum',"

So, with Noel walking out of Oasis on the basis that he'd had enough of Liam being a twat (not necessarily his words, but not unlikely either), and his brother regrouping Oasis as Beady Eye, ("Shitbag" is all the monobrowed one could muster on Twitter) we have been presented with that hen's tooth of the pop world - a second great rivalry.

Musically, neither Gallagher has moved on with their respective projects. Beady Eye's Different Gear, Still Speeding and ...High Flying Birds could easily have been named Oasis: What Happened Next. Both Gallaghers remain rooted in the Beatles/Kinks/Steve Marriott-60s-vibe-with-psychadelic-hints that became the stock-in-trade of Oasis, and continues to be Paul Weller's muse to this day.

Solo albums invariably represent freedom and a chance to explore music that wouldn't have worked, or been accepted in a group environment. Some are pure self indulgence, some offer a cathartic release valve.

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds is neither indulgent or cathartic as it's perfectly clear the 44-year-old Gallagher really couldn't care less about what anyone, least of all his brother, thinks of him. It might not offer any dramatic directional surprises, but it is certainly the album of a supreme and natural songwriter, confidently enjoying his job. 

Scanning the track listing, titles such as The Death Of You And Me and If I Had A Gun might fool the lazy journalist into thinking this is an album about Our Kid. It isn't. The Death Of You And Me, the album's first single release, is a Ray Davies-esque jaunt which includes a riotously carefree New Orleans trad jazz accompaniment created, apparently, by the various members of the production team impersonating brass instruments.


If I Had A Gun is just an unashamed love song built around Gallagher's favourite F#m7 chord (think Wonderwall, viewers) and more Mellotron and grungy Gibson to keep things from getting too sloppy. The happy-go-lucky, hippy-dippy 60s sentiment continues with Dream On, picking up the Oasis template for such throwback fluff with a song Gallagher himself brands "pop for pop's sake - a tune so good maybe people won't listen to the words".

Where Gallagher does let loose with his creative spirit, and shakes off his clear affection for The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, you get something that would make you put down the dishmop. AKA...What A Life! is such a track. With its chugging piano rhythm - reminiscent of Al Stewart's On The Border, or perhaps On The Border covered by the Scissor Sisters - it pounds along with a thudding big sound that defies the fact it was recorded by Gallagher in a tiny studio with the teaboy providing the piano sample (fact).

In the olden days, a great album was marked by a bold opening track, something intriguing to end Side 1 and keep up interest to turn over, a lively commencement to Side 2, and a memorable closer with, ideally, a lengthy guitar solo to take you into the album's outro. Stop The Clocks has that. Written by Gallagher ten years ago while in Thailand, had it have been recorded then it may have been just another Champagne Supernova. Without the Manchester scally act, it takes on a much more interesting dynamic, as rich and as curious as anything on Paul Weller's 22 Dreams, layered with more prog-ish coatings of Mellotron, acoustic guitar and organ, and closing with a storming piece of guitar work from Paul 'Strangeboy' Stacey, a former Oasis session player who brings Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds to an end with fretwork that would leave the sky black with hats if it had Johnny Greenwood's name attached to it.

Noel Gallagher is, by his own admission, neither a great guitarist nor a gifted technical musician, but he gives what you and I want, sometimes, more than anything else in a record - a good time. Something to make the morning commute more bearable, something to tune the world out, to make washing up or other household chores pass by with vim, vigour and other brands of household cleaning products.

While ...High Flying Birds will never be a solo album to have the world shouting, in unison, "I never knew he had that in him", for all its resolute rooting in territory Oasis rarely - if ever - strayed from, it reeks of unbridled enjoyment. That of its originator, as well as that of us listeners.