Review: Oasis - Be Here Now
Oasis - Be Here Now (1997)
Track Listing:
1. D'You Know What I Mean?
2. My Big Mouth
3. Magic Pie
4. Stand By Me
5. I Hope, I Think, I Know
6. The Girl In The Dirty Shirt
7. Fade In-Out
8. Don't Go Away
9. Be Here Now
10. All Around The World
11. It's Gettin' Better (Man!!)
12. All Around The World (Reprise)
Oh dear.
I remember seeing the video for “D’Ya Know What I Mean?” about two months before Be Here Now was scheduled for release, and I had such high hopes for the album because of it. It was such a 'non-single' release that it became cool... nearly eight minutes long, and the video was tremendous. Lyrics were typically Quoasis, but hey... it rocked. It didn’t get annoying after a repeat playing like previous Oasis singles might have done. The song said to me... 'Damn, these guys are some drugged up, pissed off assholes who are fed up with fame and it's trappings and they're going to make an album filled with frenzied vitriol and tear down this Britpop crap they helped build.'
OH HOW WRONG I WAS!
By the time track two (“My Big Mouth”) rolls around, we’re back to the “Rock ‘n Roll Star” doldrums. Five minutes worth of sloppy guitar and uninspired crooning pretty much erases any good times had on the album opener. The minutes tick by like hours as “Magic Pie” and “Stand By Me” go on and on in excess of six minutes each. I’m all for the ‘epic’ variety of songs, but when they have no inspiration or direction it becomes a tedious exercise for the listener to stay focused on the music.
The bluesy “Fade In-Out” is probably the only other redeeming track besides the opener, but by the time track seven rolls around, would anyone still care? I know I certainly don’t. In fact, to ease my boredom while listening to this album, I wrote a haiku, which I will now share with you…
This album is crap
I think my ears are bleeding
Can you please kill me?
Want to know how to extract information from captured enemy spies? Lock them in a cell and put “All Around The World” on repeat. They will crack without the song even repeating once… I myself cracked by the time the twenty-seventh recur of the chorus came around. This song is nine minutes of pure hell that Noel Gallagher thought would “become the anthem for my generation”. I can only imagine what brand of magic mushrooms he had to be consuming at the time in order to believe that statement would become true.
And as Liam sings the chorus to “It's Gettin' Better (Man!!)”, I have beautiful daydreams about bitch slapping the little twat in the face and screaming: ‘No it's not (man!!)’. The album closes with a reprise of “All Around The World”, as if it was good enough in the first place to warrant one. Any other tracks I ignored are so terrible and jobberific that they don’t even deserve being mentioned by name… but know that I listened to all the ’dark match tracks’ so you don’t have to!
I think ‘turgid’ would be a good word to describe this album…
Actually, now that I think about it, I was right about at least one thing from my original prediction of this album. Oasis did destroy the Britpop genre they helped create… but instead of reinventing it and taking it in new directions, they just crashed a bloody train into it. Way to go lads. Steal Be Here Now off the internet if you must. I’m advocating it.
2/10
Buy Be Here Now from CD Universe