Be Here Now (album) - Music

Music

As with Oasis' previous two albums, the songs on Be Here Now are generally anthemic. The structures are traditional, and largely follow the typical verse – chorus – verse – chorus – middle eight – chorus format of guitar-based rock music. Reviewing for Nude as the News, Jonathan Cohen noted that the album is "virtually interchangeable with 1994's Definitely Maybe or its blockbuster sequel, (What's the Story) Morning Glory?", while Noel had previously remarked that he would make three albums in this generic style. Yet the songs on Be Here Now differ in that they are longer than previous releases; an extended coda brings "D'You Know What I Mean?" to almost eight minutes, while "All Around The World" contains three key changes and lasts for a full nine minutes. The tracks are more layered and intricate than before, and each contains multiple guitar overdubs. While Morris had previously stripped away layers of overdubs on the band's debut Definitely Maybe, during the production of Be Here Now he "seemed to gleefully encourage" such excess; "My Big Mouth" has an estimated thirty tracks of guitar overdubbed onto the song. A Rolling Stone review described the guitar lines as composed of "elementary riffs." There was some experimentation: "D'You Know What I Mean?" contains a slowed down loop from N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton", while "Magic Pie" features psychedelically arranged vocal harmonies and a mellotron. According to Noel, "All I did was run my elbows across the keys and this mad jazz came out and everyone laughed." The album's production is dominated by top-end high frequency tones, and according to Uncut's Paul Lester, its use of treble is reminiscent of both late 1980s Creation Records bands such as My Bloody Valentine, and The Stooges' famously under-produced Raw Power.

The vocal melodies continue Noel's preference for "massed-rank sing-alongs", although Du Noyer concedes that not all are of the "pub-trashing idiot kind" of previous releases. At the time of release, Q's Phil Sutcliffe summarised the lyrics of Be Here Now as a mixture of "hookline optimism, a swarm of Beatles and other '60s references, a gruff love song to Meg, and further tangled expressions of his inability/unwillingness to express profound emotions."

The lyrics were elsewhere described as " the gamut from insightful to insipid", although Du Noyer admitted that Noel is " something of a closet philosopher...and often romantic to the point of big girl's blousedom." While the tracks "Don't Go Away" and "The Girl in the Dirty Shirt" were described as unabashedly sentimental, Du Noyer went on to observe that "there is compassion and sensitivity in these tracks that is not the work of oafs." Du Noyer conceded that Noel often tied himself up in "cosmic knots", but added that Gallagher had "written words that sound simple and true, and are therefore poetic without trying to be." Lester read song titles such as "Stand by Me" and "Don't Go Away" as a series of demands, both to members of his private life and his public audience.

Du Noyer praised Liam's vocal contributions and described his "Northern punk whine" as "the most distinctive individual style of our time." Lester alluded to Liam as Noel's "mouthpiece", although he qualified that Liam is the "voice of every working-class boy with half a yen to break out and make it big."