Oasis’ second album is another enjoyable but extremely overinflated album of bangers. It’s hard to get my feelings straight on Oasis - I love listening to their music, but it’s not a life changing experience for me like popular media in 2024 would have you think. It’s solid, if somewhat derivative-sounding, pop rock. There’s pretty much one guitar part in the band’s vocabulary that’s repurposed every song, rearranged slightly when they’re feeling extra creative. The lyrics aren’t much more varied, or at least they don’t feel that way from the delivery. My head would call this a soft 3/5, if it was in charge, but it’s not - my heart gives it a much higher rating and I can’t figure out why.

Oasis reminds me of other bands like AC/DC (who I also love, for the record) who literally have one sound that they rearrange and play a dozen slightly varied ways on every album. Is Oasis the British AC/DC? If Bon Scott had grown up dealing with dreary weather and beans on toast rather than the scorpions and dust tornadoes and Fosters of his home country, would he have come out sounding like one of the Gallaghers? Would Angus Young have turned down his distortion and strummed his endlessly repeating power chords on an acoustic guitar instead of an overdriven SG? File that under another theory that’s just dumb enough to enrage the internet. Also I’ve never been to Australia but as a fellow former colony of Britain I feel like we both have the right to poke a little fun at our old pals/overlords.

Sometimes simple sugars are what you’re craving, I suppose, and Oasis is the musical equivalent of a lollipop (sorry, a lolly). The enjoyment is part nostalgia, part simple head-nodding, part just letting your brain go to sleep to enjoy the gentle rush of music. It’s extremely British, and I say that as a neutral assessment, like saying my soup is salty - it’s something you might like or dislike. I like, but I also can’t say I’ve learned anything deep about life through Oasis’ music. A perplexing and enjoyable puzzle.

From the roundup Jamwise #48 - Best Albums of 1995.