“What day is it? Wednesday? A Wednesday night in Leeds. What happens on a Wednesday night in Leeds?” enquires a perhaps slightly nervous Noel Gallagher, ready to get the crowd riled up. Nervous not because of the gig itself. Nervous for the Champions League semi-final result that could affect the fate for his beloved Manchester City – admitting to checking the score during the encore.
An extremely blokey audience, you can’t help but feel you have walked into a Wetherspoons on a Friday night. Almost everywhere you turn, there is a beer holding, Adidas wearing man sporting some style of Britpop haircut.
Despite a slightly motionless stage presence and his feet welded to the floor only slipping out to play facing his backing band behind him, the older of the Gallagher brothers has no doubt in entertaining the crowd.
20 years to the day since the legendary Oasis’ Maine Road gig, Gallagher doesn’t let down his promise of giving the audience what they want with a lot more of Oasis on offer. Dedicating You Know We Can’t Look Back to “all the Oasis fans in the room” and an acoustic version of classic B-side Fade Away to “your parents”, arrays of psychedelic videos or touching childhood photos filled the backdrop of the stage.
There is no uncertainty that Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds are a whole new professional outfit, more than former band Oasis ever were. Hitting every note from opening track Everybody’s On The Run, Gallagher showcases a lot more instrument variation from his discovery of the saxophone on last year’s Chasing Yesterday. Recent works (Riverman, In the Heat of the Moment) served as a reminder that his lyrical and pure musical talent isn’t slipping away fast, letting the crowd know early on that the best is yet to come in terms of the setlist.
Crafting a balance between beloved classics arranged with a more acoustic and brassy texture (Wonderwall, Champagne Supernova), Oasis B-sides replaced with Noel’s voice rather than younger brother’s Liam’s (Half The World Away, Talk Tonight) and the best of his new material (The Mexican, Ballad of the Mighty I) to prove an artistic leap forward since his solo debut in 2011.
Strumming through Oasis’ best-loved work, the daunting venue began to feel intimate, cosy even. At the risk of breaking the hearts of die-hard Oasis fans, Noel’s vocals gave Liam’s staple songs a whole new sound and a whole new texture. The musician, and the band as a whole, avoids the use of ad-libs, sticking carefully but respectfully to the script.
A fruitful four-song encore drew the religious experience to a close. The vocals of Gallagher barely heard over the reverb of the 13,500 capacity crowd and the heartfelt close of Don’t Look Back In Anger.
“It’s been years, Leeds. You’ve been great. I’ll see you back here again when I’ve written my next masterpiece.” Gallagher acknowledges both the crowd and the passage of time.
The scorching B-side of The Masterplan may have offered a better encore position but the lyrics “Say it loud and sing it proud today” were engraved in the gig throughout, as much as they have been engraved the lives of any passionate Gallagher fan.
Words by Brianna Riley