Oasis

The lessons we’ve learned about Oasis over the years are they’re unabashed worshipers of The Beatles, and their songs are über-catchy. The band’s seventh studio album opens with the guttural “Bag It Up,” followed by a brief string of exceptional songs: the upbeat “Shock of the Lightning” and “Falling Down,” which is comparable to Oasis’ finest. But from there, Dig Out Your Soul grinds its way to the finish and leaves us wishing for a better ending. Liam Gallagher’s vocals are mercifully much less gravelly here, but as usual tributes to the Fab Four abound—both lyrically (“Love is a litany/A magical mystery”) and instrumentally (“To Be Where There’s Life” blatantly rips off the same sustained C-chord, the gangly bass and the sitar from The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”). “I’m Outta Time” even closes with a mumbling excerpt from a John Lennon interview. The good news here is that the Gallagher brothers have at least partially survived contemporary music’s overall erosion. The less-good news is that this isn’t near their best album.