Noel Gallagher once claimed that the day Oasis release a greatest hits album will be the day they hang up their instruments for good.
Of course he and his swaggering, simian like younger brother/nemesis Liam have said many things over the years (much of it unprintable) only to later take it all back.
As it turns out, then, Stop the Clocks isn’t the end of one of Britain’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll bands, but rather a contractual obligation to their former record label Sony who were hell bent on releasing the album with or without Oasis’ creative input. Fearing the worst, the band agreed to get involved, designing the art work and, more importantly, choosing the tracklist.
“They own all the rights to everything, so we were informed that they were going to do a retrospective of some description by Christmas,” Noel recently explained to the Toronto Sun.
“Well, if it is has to be now, it has to be now. Don’t be surprised if there’s a singles album following this. They’re well within their rights to do it.”
So don’t say you haven’t been warned.
They say:
Q: “It’s meant to be their greatest hits. It’s not.”
Teletext: “Until the box set and, probably, a new album, stop carping and sing along.”
MSN: “Whisper it but Liam and Noel have only gone and become national treasures.”
We say:
In a way, despite his old label’s intentions, Noel has kept his word this time round: Stop the Clocks isn’t really a greatest hits album at all, with as many as a dozen of the band’s Top 40 singles curiously missing in action, including ‘Roll With It’, ‘Sunday Morning Call’ and ‘Whatever’.
More tellingly, 1997’s bloated, coke fuelled Be Here Now doesn’t get a single look in, which of course means you can kiss goodbye to the anthemic rock epic ‘D’You Know What I Mean’ and the ‘Hey Jude’ plagiarism of ‘All Around the World’, thanks to the majority of the 18 tracks drawing heavily from the 1994-95 catalogue.
Still, what remains is a collection of jukebox favourites (‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, ‘Wonderwall’), live staples (‘Live Forever, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’) and B-sides (‘The Masterplan’, ‘Half the World Away’, the re-recorded ‘Acquiesce’) that most bands would sell their souls to the devil for – old Britpop rivals Blur included.
Indeed, this is music that defines an era, proudly bearing the prototype colours of Cool Britannia before they were stained in blood, and alive with a sense of freedom and joy that can only come from unadulterated rock ‘n’ roll. There’ll never be another band quite like them.
Like this? Try these:
The Beatles – 1
T Rex – Electric Warrior
Slade – The Very Best Of Slade
RELEASED
20th Nov ‘06
LABEL
Big Brother/ Sony BMG
POSTED...
Fri 17 Nov 2006 at 1:42pm
