Oasis: Not my favourite band

I was thinking earlier this week about how few bands it's possible to hate these days. I don't mean that vaguely bored feeling you get when The Kaiser Chiefs turn up at another festival with their droning self-important "anthems", but that proper seething malice I felt towards UB40 and Dr Alban a decade ago.

Part of it is age. Most of the energy I used to expend on loathing a band, I now need for getting up from the sofa, or deciding between brands of margarine in Tescos.

But I think a larger part is that the charts and the airwaves are stuffed full of what's been christened "landfill indie" - The Fratellis, The Piegeon Detectives, The Wombats. They all use the definite article in their name, which is ironic because they all stand for nothing at all. But you can't hate them because they're too bland and inoffensive to matter.

So thank god for Oasis. Here is a band that genuinely make my blood boil. I hate them with a passion bordering on psychosis. If anyone so much as mentions their name in my presence I am actually compelled to spit out my dummy and launch into an expletive-filled invective, with pointing and everything.

Then I might need a nice biscuit to help me calm down.

So, have you heard Oasis' new single? It's exactly what you'd expect. A droning guitar line, a sitar because The Beatles had one, some psuedo-philosophical bollocks parading as lyrics, and Liam's uninspired, nasal whine that everyone but me seems to think is the sound of dangerous rebellion.

It even uses the phrase "magical mystery". I mean, it's great to be inspired by the Beatles - they were a pretty good band - but couldn't the Gallaghers put an atom of an iota of an ounce of fucking effort into it?

Apparently, the answer to that question is "no".

But this isn't simply a rant about how Oasis went shit after What's The Story (Morning Glory). They were shit even then. Wonderwall, Noel's supposedly tender love note to Meg Matthews, is so leaden it could drown a whale. Who in their right mind wants to be told "after all, you're as great as a George Harrison solo LP"? Even coming from a Beatle-o-phile like Gallagher that's a barely-veiled insult.

I think I would be less offended if this lumbering relic of a band wasn't taken so seriously, but the current levels of airplay for The Shock Of The Lightning suggest that, once again, the new Oasis album will be treated with more respect and reverence than Alan Titchmarsh at a WI cakesale.

Still, I'm glad to have got that rant off my chest. Now, for a nice biscuit.

Oasis - The Shock Of The Lightning

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