this is an old review i wrote ages ago, but i couldn't find a review on it here and i'm bored so here ya go

Today, I was sat at a university computer when I noticed a free student magazine. Intrigued by the strange front cover, I thumbed through as I waited for the PC to start up. Inside I noticed an advert that looked a lot like Franz Ferdinand’s artwork. You know, brown/orange blocks of colour, angular, a general 1940s kitch look about it. It was an ad for a really great new band who, surprise surprise, were a lot like Franz Ferdinand. “Wow, great� You’re thinking “We really need another band like Franz Ferdinand, no way is there enough of them already.� Well don’t worry kids, here’s another one, and the best thing about them is their name. Wait for it … Reich Angle! Get it, Reich … Angle! Like right angle, but Reich, as in the Third Reich. Haha! How clever is that, Riech … Angle? That’s brilliant, ‘cos Nazi Germany is hot right now, what with the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz this year. Good job guys, you’re gonna go down a storm!

I hate bandwagon-jumpers. I’d heard, before I’d actually listened to Oasis’ new album, that that was precisely what they had become. The NME and associated press have been printing off lists of bands Oasis have slagged off or praised for years. Every time Noel is seen at a gig he’s accused of trying to keep-in with the current fashion. Why? Because its pretty trendy to see Oasis as rock dinosaurs approaching extinction, just as their own mentors were in 1994.

But what’s this rising from the embers? A new album-phoenix for the last remaining mad-for-it madchester posse … Oasis are BACK!!! Fanfares erupt; trumpets blaze; people go crazy; a confused young man throws himself through a nearby window. Well not quite. We’ve been here twice before, remember. And both Standing on the Shoulder of Giants and Heathen Chemistry were a bit shit. Oasis are like Prometheus: with every fresh album critics swoop in like vultures to tear its liver out, but each day Oasis re-emerge fully healed, only to again subject themselves to the same torture. Why should this time be any different?

Because this time round Oasis are different. Not radically different, they haven’t moved into barbershop or anything silly like that, but the new material is significantly different to the usual tripe they’ve produced in the last five years. Each song on Don’t Believe The Truth sounds kinda like Oasis, but with all the gubbins removed. Nowhere is this more evident than on Mucky Fingers. In true Oasis fashion, its intro sounds vaguely like some other song by some other band, but I can’t quite put my finger on it (Velvet Underground, perhaps?). Its good though: the guitar seems to be playing just one chord throughout the entire song very, very loudly. The result is a song which is quite different from anything they’ve produced in recent years, but still with that familiar Oasis charm that would appeal to the fans.

The particular skill of nicking ideas from their peers Noel and the gang have developed is blaringly obvious in Part Of The Queue. C’mon guys, that’s clearly Golden Brown by The Stranglers. Still, we ultimately forgive them for it because its again pretty good. What’s going on here, am I beginning to like an Oasis album again??? This hasn’t happened since What’s The Story …

Yes and No. Unfortunately the single, Lyla, is rubbish. Liam’s voice is still as grating as it was on Heathen Chemistry, and the really, really bad rhyming couplets (I don’t mind/as long as there’s a bed beneath the starts that shine) lost their charm years ago. Having said that, A Bell Will Ring is quality, and I can see others tracks appealing to all those old diehard fans out there.

Oasis definitely haven’t remade Definitely Maybe, but they have produced something that may allow them to climb at least some of the way back up that slippery slope. Critics may call it a cynical attempt to muscle back in with their contemporaries, but so what? Oasis clearly don’t give a shit, neither should anyone else.

you didnt look very hard.

most normal people would point it out politely and link to it

well, idve thought most "normal" people would be able to see that there was already a review with the exact same title that you gave yours juste a few threads down the first page of reviews. id also hav thought most "normal" people wouldnt take such offence to my comment of your having not looked very hard to think it to hav been so impolite- a little bit ofa touchy response, dontcha think?

meh ... i wasn't offended or anything ... just thought i'd reply to your arsy comment in an arsy way :P