As You Were

Brand new sealed vinyl.      

   Liam Gallagher was made for viral stardom. His flawless insults anticipated an era where celebrity reactions became shorthand for shade, and they’ve mostly been his internet currency until recently. Gallagher started promoting his debut solo album, As You Were, in a very early interview with Britain’s Q magazine last August. It wasn’t his jabs at older brother Noel (“that cunt”) that orbited Twitter, but signs of a more meditative outlook. “I was running on [Hampstead] Heath and I thought, ‘That looks like a nice tree, I’m going to climb that fucking tree,’” he said. “Climbed it and sat there with my hood up for about 10 minutes.” He reached peak dad malapropism back in August, referring to A$AP Rocky as “that bloke, WhatsApp Ricky.” More recently, his theory that real rock stars don’t make tea did big numbers, along with his approach to flying. “I just sit there and stare out the window,” he said. “Pure mind control, mate. I’m a Zen cunt, me.”

The promotional campaign for Gallagher’s solo debut has been going on for 14 months. When critiquing bands’ unwieldy album cycles has become a genre unto itself, it is borderline remarkable that nobody in their right mind would complain if the Liam Gallagher press tour went on forever, lighting up our timelines with a never-ending stream of the 45-year-old bon vivant’s observations on the beautifully mundane. We cannot all spend the afternoon getting drunk in the back of the butcher’s, as he does in that fairytale Q feature, but we can all climb a tree and mellow with age without forsaking our idiosyncrasies. Who really needs a Liam Gallagher solo album? How can you improve on perfection?

But given that rock’n’roll transformed Liam’s life, it’s not surprising that he takes his self-appointed role as its last protector very seriously, though his staunch commitment to Real Rock Music over the last 25 years makes As You Were an interesting contradiction. He’s always accepted his limitations as a songwriter, mostly singing Noel’s songs in Oasis or writing with former Oasis bandmates Gem Archer and Andy Bell in Beady Eye. But those are plausible Proper Band formations. About a third of As You Were was co-written with pop songwriter Miike Snow’s Andrew Wyatt and produced by Greg Kurstin. There are two songs with no Gallagher writing credit at all. The prospect of a strong Gallagher album—him at the peak of his powers, backed by songwriters who understand how to pair the best of him with punchy production—is tantalizing. But the diluted authorship leaves him floundering amid songs that manage to be overly complex and fiercely indistinct at the same time.

As You Were starts promisingly enough. Lead single “Wall of Glass” is easily the record’s best song, cresting on a big, hairy harmonica blast that leers with intent. It’s as much of a hodgepodge as anything on 1997’s abrasively multi-tracked Be Here Now—a wall of guitar, gospel choirs, brass—but it leaves space for Gallagher’s voice to catalyze a snarl of disapproval into the belief that there’s something better just out of reach, that unique quality that’s let him outlast two decades of terrible albums after just two years of great ones. He briefly regains his vocal power here after several years of sounding utterly shagged. But it doesn’t last throughout the record: He sounds uncomfortable at higher tempos (“Greedy Soul,” “You Better Run”) and mawkish on syrupy numbers like “Bold,” a semi-acoustic apology for bad behavior that is neither contrite nor cocky. John Lennon died at 40; at 45, Gallagher has no vocal compass.

His lifelong musical preoccupations are laced through the record: Beatles grandeur (“Paper Crown”), T. Rex (“You Better Run”), self-referential Oasis nods (“For What It’s Worth” sounds like “Stand by Me”). But As You Were lacks direction and plays out as a series of inoffensive dirges. The rocking motion of the raucous “I Get By” makes it feel seasick, and “When I’m in Need” lumbers from stodgy prog madrigal to endless attempts at an ornate pay-off, none of which land. “Paper Crown” sounds like Cast, “Come Back to Me” like Radiohead, “Universal Gleam” uncannily like nemeses Blur’s “Tender”—an identity crisis if ever there was one. Aside from “Wall of Glass,” As You Were never convinces you of its reason to exist, and there’s little more purpose to be found in the lyrics.

Searching for clarity in a Liam Gallagher lyric is like looking for artistic depth in a coloring book, but a brief summary anyway: Everyone who’s ever let him down had better watch it, because they’re gonna get their just desserts, but when he apologizes, you best believe God is on his side. “In my defense all my intentions were good/And heaven holds a place somewhere for the misunderstood,” he shrugs on “For What It’s Worth.” Fine—imagine how pointless a humble Gallagher album would be. If he’s writing in his typical classic rock madlibs (“Angels, gimme shelter/‘Cause I’m about to fall/It’s all gone helter-skelter,” he swaggers on “You Better Run”), then his co-writers are having fun reassembling his greatest tropes as Gallagher fridge poetry.

It’s probably no coincidence that As You Were’s silliest song is also an unmitigated highlight. “Chinatown” was written entirely by Andrew Wyatt and Michael Tighe, who have an uncanny ear for Gallagher’s surrealist worldview. “Well the cops are taking over/While everyone’s in yoga/‘Cause happiness is still a warm gun,” rock’s best anorak-wearer drawls over a steady beat and soft finger-picked guitar. “What’s it to be free, man? What’s a European? Me, I just believe in the sun.” Fortunately, there’s little time to contemplate Gallagher’s searching inquiry into Britain’s post-Brexit identity as a huge, beautiful, meaningless chorus comes to blow it all away, just as it should.

After some impressively boilerplate material, the last few songs offer a tiny bit of insight into Gallagher’s sense of purpose on an unmemorable album. On “Come Back to Me,” he could be pulling himself back from the brink. The laconic “Universal Gleam” feels like his promise to keep on playing this role for fans, a middle-aged “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star” about his ability to galvanize and reflect unheard lives (“I’ll help you fix your broken dreams/I’ll give you something you can shout about/I won’t ever let you down”). And although the gooey “I’ve All I Need” apparently takes its lyrics from inspirational quote montages (“Tomorrow never knows/The winds of change must blow”), as a tribute to his girlfriend’s unwavering support, it’s unusually vulnerable. As You Were isn’t, as Gallagher billed it last year, “chin-out” music. It’s more chin-up, a faltering effort from an artist whose voice continues to drown out his music.