Review Summary: You shouldn't go for it unless you are a die-hard fan of 1993-97 Oasis. You can buy it, of course, but don't tell anyone about that, or you will be recognized as somebody who has too much money or bad musical taste. Your choice mate, your choice.
In 1997 before releasing "Be Here Now" Oasis still had had a luxury of being "The Biggest Band In The World". But when it finally appeared it turned out that when compared to the previous releases of Oasis it was rather bland. With BHN Oasis killed Britpop which started to lose popularity in favor of modern rock genres played by Radiohead or Blur (Ok Computer and Blur was released at the same time). It seems to me before leaving the sinking ship flying the flag of Britpop Oasis wanted to release one more album while they still had quite a lot of fans.
"The Masterplan", which is not a regular album but a B-sides compilation, appeared in late 1998, as the last "britpop era Oasis') release, containing their 1993-97 recordings, which didn't appeared on their regular albums. Why? Were they too weak? Oh, Noel, two years before you were comparing your band to Beatles, so I thought none of your songs can be regarded as weak or even pedestrian. So were you lying?
It comes down to Masterplan contains songs that are just the weaker copies of Oasis' album songs - all of them written in the same vain. "Listen up"? Just the watered down copy of "Supersonic" streched to almost 6 and a half minutes. So they always liked to write long songs... "Fade Away" seems to be just the copy of "Rock N' Roll Star". I just can't like it, especially due to senseless noises in the end. But the most hilarious things are the ballads. The trademark of Oasis. The thing is that Noel Gallagher uses exactly the same strumming in all of them - comical "Talk Tonight" with whining vocals and hand clapping. "Half The World away" which is so weak I can't recall it now. And the most mentionworthy "The Masterplan" nothing more than a poppish ballad (it could be easily replaced with Magic Pie or any other ballad sung by older of Gallaghers - I think no one would spot the difference). Everytime Noel tries to hide all the dullness under such a snobby production - strings, pianos or pseudo-nostalgic acoustic guitars. Apart from those totally crappy tracks there are plenty of songs which are just forgettable. If you would point a pistol to me and ask to hum "Rockin Chair" or "Stay Young" (BHN era b-side which is far better than most of songs from that LP) i would be a goner. To be honest I must mention songs which bring something we haven't heard before - chilling instrumental jam "Swamp Song" and headbangin' "Headshrinker" (great liam's vocal comedown at 1:30) are quite decent, but "Going Nowhere" is stupid folk-ish song, which would work as a tv show theme, but not "The Biggest Band in The World's" song. Just skip, and don't listen to it anymore. I Finally I think that "Masterplan" is too long. If only Oasis had cut short before releasing it and threw away songs like "Half The World Away", "Rockin Chair" or "Fade Away" it would be eatable.
Now I know why britpop died. People who had made it the most popular genre of music at the time just killed it a few years later with terrible songs. Where is the logic?
