1998 Oasis: All Around The World

Back on 'D'You Know What I Mean?' I passed comment on Oasis resorting to re-heating their own ideas in a stewed song that rambled on far longer than it needed to. I think I might have been a bit premature though and I've been tempted to go back and re-write that entry in the same way (I suppose) the person who said World War One was 'the war to end all wars' must have wished he'd kept his mouth shut too; 'All Around The World' takes the flaws of that former song and trumps them by the power of ....ooh….about ten.

Although apparently pre-dating both, 'All Around The World' lifts and recycles the least interesting bits from 'Wonderwall' and (in particular) 'Don't Look Back In Anger' and then overloads them with the zeal of an over-enthusiastic kid slotting too many tools and non standard extras onto the Buckaroo mule just to see what the happens. The end result? Instead of bucking them off with a deft kick, the poor beast collapses under their weight and lies waiting for the bullet in the head to put it out of its misery.

'All Around The World' could use one of those bullets between the eyes too; at almost ten minutes long, it simply does not know when to stop. And it doesn't stop because it doesn't have to - with Oasis in their pomp and gorging on their own majesty then why should it? Never mind that two thirds of flab could easily be lopped from that running time with no discernible loss of anything, this was the 'greatest songwriter of his generation' at his peak and so I'm guessing that nobody was too minded to give a 'Wooah there cowboy' pull on the reins to curtail the director's cut of one louder, multi-key change march of sound that relentlessly climbs an Escher staircase to nowhere. What did I say? 'Prog rock without the progression'? Right.

It doesn't help that Oasis measure their own progression by referencing an all too obvious inspiration - 'All Around The World' wears its Beatles (circa 'Magical Mystery Tour' era) influences not on its sleeve but on foot square, day-glo inked placards hammered crudely onto its face and chest with six inch nails. I mean, what have we got? A 'la la la' 'Hey Jude' coda, backwards masked guitar drones, an orchestra doing bits of business here, there and everywhere while Liam shouts it all down with his best 'I Am The Walrus' Lennon impression. In case that wasn't enough, it came with a 'Yellow Submarine' aping video that even featured a yellow submarine. These boys were shameless.

But each component part of the song is not there to round the song out to completeness with some George Martin-like magic filling but because 'All Around The World' abhors a vacuum and every space had to have something/anything shoehorned in from the stack 'em high bargain basement of noise. Shits, however, are clearly not being given to quality control and the surface aura of experimentation becomes the one eyed obsession of the boy racer adding spot lamps, rear spoilers sports exhaust and full body kit to a one litre Ford Fiesta, blissfully unaware that he’s building a four wheeled dog's dinner of taste free ridiculousness. I feel the same about 'All Around The World'. I can't fault its ambition, but in execution the band are pushy parents co-ercing an unwilling B side into a career as an anthem when all it wants to do is be clapped along to around a campfire. In their efforts, they only create a louder, longer, less interesting and lumpen song that pisses all over any spark of fire that early Oasis crackled with.