Familiar To Millions

Sound DNA

• Alt/Indie
• Britpop

• distorted
• swaggering
• urban

About

Deep into this live album, captured during Oasis’ July 21, 2000 show at Wembley Stadium, Liam Gallagher introduces “Live Forever” as the night’s last song. “We’d play more,” he tells the 70,000-strong crowd, “but it’s been a bit of a topsy fucking weird year.” With a shrug in his voice, Noel replies, “Same as the last one.” It’s true that Oasis approached—and then crossed into—a new millennium with uncertainty. Founding members Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs (guitar) and Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan (bass) quit the band during 1999 sessions for fourth album <i>Standing on the Shoulder of Giants</i>, and the whole process of making that record had wearied Noel. Eleven years later, he would admit feeling uninspired while making <i>Standing…</i>, creating it simply for the sake of having something to tour. Not that that tour went smoothly—Noel left the European leg in May 2000 amid reports of a row with Liam, returning for the UK and Ireland dates later in the summer. All that said, <i>Familiar to Millions</i> presents a band rising from whatever slumber and turbulence had befallen them. They’d recruited well, adding Ride’s Andy Bell (bass) and Heavy Stereo’s Gem Archer (guitar), and when “Cigarettes & Alcohol” unfurls into a jam session of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” here, you sense of group of players finding and enjoying their chemistry. Paranoid and sprawling, eight-minute <i>Standing…</i> highlight “Gas Panic!” is a brave mid-set choice to follow a typically skin-prickling charge through “Acquiesce,” but Archer and Bell’s agility give it consuming momentum. Rumbling to life like a supercar on opener “Go Let It Out,” Liam’s an absorbing bundle of yearning and menace as the band rolls out a barrage of adroitly played, crowd-rousing classics. You can almost feel Wembley’s foundations beginning to dislodge as 70,000 fans pogo in harmony with Noel’s “Because we need each other, we believe in one another” during “Acquiesce.” Along with the following night’s show, this would mark the last time a UK band headlined the stadium before it was demolished for a rebuild in 2002. For a rejuvenated Oasis, it also signaled something of a fresh start.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits