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Oasis change direction

New Oasis songs channel The Stooges, The Doors, The Pretty Things and (surprisingly) John Lennon

18 August 2008 - After slating his musical contemporaries last week (15 August), Noel Gallagher has been talking to 6 Music about the new direction his band have taken on their upcoming release Dig Out Your Soul.

Describing some of the new tracks on the Music Week, the Oasis mastermind said: "They aren’t ‘song-y’ songs like The Importance Of Being Idle or Let There Be Love - because I was kinda sick of writing songs like that."

Of the new tracks, he said they came out of bass lines: "One of them sounds like The Stooges doing [The Stone Roses] Fools Gold, one of them sounds like The Pretty Things doing Strawberry Fields Forever, and one of them sounds like The Doors doing something by John Lennon."

"The songs have a very definite style which is more ‘groove’ based. I hate to use the word ‘groove’ or ‘beats’ or ‘dance’ or anything like that, because it’s none of those things. I don’t know what it is, but it’s kinda in that world. It’s not Britpop, let’s put it that way. It’s not our usual thing."

"It’s just really exciting, three of the tracks have got two drummers on, me and Zak [Starkey] playing drums. Some of it sounds a bit glam. There’s no pop singles on it. I’d be amazed if anything else gets on the radio past the first single."

Lyrical content

As for the lyrics Noel said that Dig Out Your Soul leans towards a biblical theme.

"God makes an appearance in virtually every single, as does ‘the light’ and ‘angels’. And it’s not just in my songs. We [guitarist Gem, bassist Andy Bell and singer Liam] don’t write together, any of us, and we never discuss any of anyone’s lyrics - but it’s quite biblical and I don’t know where it has come from," he said.

Noel also revealed that the record is divided into two halves: "It splits into two parts. There’s a kind of piano-y, John Lennon-y obligatory plod-away song in the middle, which Liam’s wrote, and that’s to break up the two sides which are pretty intense and it’s full-on from the start to finish."

Dig Out Your Soul is out on 6 October with a full tour in the diary kick-starting the day after its release.

Georgie Rogers / Matt Everitt  (bbc6music)