Album Review: Beady Eye - Different Gear, Still Speeding

Oasis were amazing: era-defining, culture-altering (for better or for worse, depending on your views on Stella and gobbing), arms-aloft-spine-tingling crowd pleasers. The record will show that during their heyday they made one great album (and-a-half), and then played two nights at Knebworth that were among the most joyous in modern rock 'n' roll history. Why could they not just have left it at that?
 
If Oasis in their prime were the Rolls-Royce of retro-pop, then Beady Eye are a broken-down, inoperable unicycle, and the guy behind the wheel as the quality of vehicle decreased over progreesive years and deeply unprogressive albums has long since had the great sense to bugger off. Look, I haven't quite figured out how a car turns into a bike, but there we have it. Whatever way you look at it, Different Gear, Still Speeding is absolute, unexpurgated musical death; it has no redeeming qualities; it is like a lesson in How Not To Make A Record.
 
It’s about a million years long. He says "Hooooolllddd Ooooonnnn!" approximately forty thousand times. "Just call me The Roller", he chirps. No, Liam. No, I won’t. I’ll call you a massively untalented has-been; I’ll call you a worthless, tuneless, idealess hack. But obviously not to your face, as you would probably cave my face in if I tried. Fair play, our kid... And yet no physical damage meted out by Gob could compare to the inestimable damage this record has done to an hour (or was it really a million years?) of my life.
 
Needles to say, absolutely ALL of the lyrics are unimaginably awful. "Rolling around in anticipation...", he sings on one of the endless, nameless, indistinguishable songs. Well, I suppose that one's at least quite funny, in a way, but I have a feeling it’s meant to be an actual, serious lyric. Of course, ALL of the music sounds like a band, not so much aping the Beatles, but somehow imitating Oasis covering the Beatles. Stunning stuff. That kind of thing takes proper effort.
 
"Ah!", they’ll protest, the dedicated fans, as the reviews roll in. "Ah, sure it’s just sour grapes from these ‘fashionable music’ writers, with their Foals and their bands that start with ‘Deer’ and 'Crystal'..." Not the case, I’ll argue. I bloody love rock 'n' roll bands, loved Oasis when they started out and don’t have a lot of time for middle-class fringes playing at mathematical rock. The problem here is that this record is absolutely, irretrievably awful.
 
One could go on but, like Mr. Gallagher should really have done a long, long time ago, I’ll shut up now.