Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds – Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds

Noel Gallagher spoke recently of the follow up to his first solo album, promising an experimental collaboration with FSOL's psychedelic arm, Amorphous Androgynous. We shall have to wait for this new found eclecticism. With the possible exception of the dance tinged AKA...What A Life, there’s no evidence on the present collection of any significant departure from the Oasis blueprint, which – even if it had become safe – still unleashed a little menace on 2008 swansong Dig Out Your Soul.

Still, opener Everybody's On The Run does benefit from the addition of some sweeping, neatly arranged strings from his rotating cast of Birds; If I Had A Gun stirs the mood with a blissfully melancholic chord sequence, and the aforementioned What A Life pulsates with the kind of cinematic grandeur at which Noel has become a master. There will certainly be a vast audience for Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, and if this is intended as a sweetener for a radical excursion on the next release, it could prove to be well-judged.