Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Riverman
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Riverman (2015)
Directed by: Noel Gallagher
‘Chasing Yesterday’ marks a new chapter and sound for Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. It’s the first album to be produced as well as written by Noel and features a much broader array of instrumentation than ever before; the result is a rich, expansive and multi-layered record, drawing from a range of disparate influences – from west coast rock to classic rock’n’roll and even some space jazz (!) – whilst still being very obviously a completely cohesive body of work. On producing the album, Noel said:
“It was a major pain in the arse. It’s not that I’ve ever had people telling me what to write or what direction to go in, but managing sessions from one end of the week to the other proved extremely difficult. I had all these people looking at me and saying: ‘right, what are we doing today?’ I was making the whole thing up as I went along.”
The first single to be taken from the album will be, ‘In The Heat Of The Moment’. This hypnotic track was inspired by a documentary in which an astronaut said that going into space for the first time feels like touching the face of God. “If that’s not an opening line for a song I don’t know what is” said Mr Gallagher.
The beautiful opening track ‘Riverman’ is an expansive song with several guitar and saxophone solos. Noel said of the track:
“We made a demo of Riverman and we knew it was amazing,” “And then I was listening to [sax-laden one-hit wonder from 1974] Pinball by Brian Protheroe and thought: Shall I actually get a saxophone player? And what if I get him to play not one but two solos? I know I’m going to be accused of sax crimes. But fuck it. There’s nobody to tell me not to do it. And when you listen to that saxophone, please, don’t think about the guy from Spandau Ballet.”
