Well, while Oasis MK II aren’t quite the same band, they’re not really a different one either. ‘Different Gear, Still Speeding’ picks up where ‘Dig Out Your Soul’ petered out; with a gaggle of plodding, middle-aged attempts at rocking out (‘Standing On The Edge Of The Noise’, ‘Bring The Light’,) flanked by a few gentle dollops of drowsy balladeering (‘The Beat Goes On’, ‘The Morning Sun’).
Mostly it’s about as thrilling as a milk float ride (squinting through our Beady Eye, it seems we’re in a place where it’s perpetually 1974 and everyone looks a bit like Mungo Jerry), but it’s not without its naïve charms. For instance, the lyrics are a pile of crap – a slew of drivel strung together with a load of guttural “C’mon”’s – but hey, that’s fine. He’s Liam Gallagher, not Leonard Cohen.
As it turns out, the album’s best moments don’t have any words at all – the outros to ‘Wind Up Dream’ and ‘Wigwam’ are cockle-warmingly mellow; one goes “aah-aah-aah” while the other goes “nah-nah-nah”. Splendid.
Sadly though, what lets ‘Different Gear, Still Speeding’ down in the main is not its – admittedly toe-tapping – command of vowel sounds, nor its nostalgia for itself and everything it’s shamelessly ripping off. No. What lets it down is that it is unutterably, irrevocably and unswervingly dull. Dull, dull, dull. As boring as the hum of a fridge.
That gear they’re in, is it reverse?

JJ Dunning