Review Summary: Dig Out Your Soul envelops the listener in its psychedelic pop rock, and ends Oasis' illustrious career on a high note.
After ten years, Oasis finally turned it around on their 2005 album
Don't Believe the Truth, an album that took the band from snobbish, radio hungry anthem workers to being bluesy, heartfelt, hardworking songsmiths, and the band had found worldwide and critical success, once again. But, Oasis had already played with the fires of success once before, and they lost most of the respect they had earned in the process of trying to keep it, so many wondered whether or not the band would be able to keep the critical success that they had worked so hard to attain this time around.
Musically, Oasis' seventh and final album,
Dig Out Your Soul is different in almost every way from
Don't Believe the Truth, even though the albums were only separated by three years. Where as
Truth was rooted in the basics of rock and roll and mainly showed that Oasis still had the ability to make a great album,
Soul is much more laid back and places more in the psychedelic genre, focusing more on the soundscapes and the instrumentation rather than on the basics. Make no mistake here: Oasis had already tried to extend their talents into the world of psychedelia and experimentation on 2000's
Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, but fell short of the mark because of messy lyrics, unimaginative and drawn out songs, and limited ideas. But, because of their attention to detail, their new found maturity and because of the seriousness they put into making this album something special, Oasis just flat out sound better on
Dig Out Your Soul than they ever have before, even though they are creating songs that are outside of their typical comfort zone.
Because of its inherent structure,
Dig Out Your Soul is not meant to be an album that one could pick out a few singles to listen to individually; unlike
(What's the Story) Morning Glory? or
Heathen Chemistry, this is an album that does not have many singles that are ready for radio play. Like on every Oasis album, the hooks are still the centerpiece of the songs, but they are more subtle and dense this time around. However, there are some obvious highlights like the drum breakdown and subsequent sonic explosion in “The Shock of the Lightning,” the bongo infused stylings of “To Be Where There's Life,” the interesting drum patterns and guitar effects of “Falling Down,” and the slow deliberate trotting of “Waiting For the Rapture” and “(Get Off Your) High Horse Lady.”
Unlike Oasis' previous efforts where flow and tracking have been a substantial problem,
Dig Out Your Soul keeps the listener enticed throughout the majority of the album, right through the first side and into the second side. The album's flow starts to waver a bit towards the end, however, with songs like “The Nature of Reality” and “Soldier On” not hitting their psychedelic goals as well as the other songs on the album. While these songs are still stronger than the majority of their work after 1995, they do not close the album as well as some of their other well known and spectacular closers such as “Champagne Supernova,” “Let There Be Love,” or “Married With Children.”
After seven studio albums, worldwide success, countless awards, and too many number one singles in their home country to keep track of, Oasis called it quits in 2009. Obviously it is a very hard task to sum up the varied discography that Oasis left us with. While they did not always find worldwide success with everything they released, the band had so much energy and exuberance in their music, and songs like “Don't Look Back in Anger,” “Slide Away” and “The Importance of Being Idle” will forever be engrained into the minds of those who have listened to them. The band remains to this day one of the most applauded and critically successful British bands of all time, joining rare company such as their idols The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks. These days, no break up is certain, and with the 20th anniversaries of
Definitely Maybe and
(What's the Story) Morning Glory? coming up in the next couple of years, one can not be sure that the Gallagher brothers are done making music together. If and when they do reconvene (and knowing their mutual love of attention, and money, they probably will), it is certainly guaranteed that the music they will give us will be just as timeless.
