Anti-Climacus

No band ever sowed the seeds of its own destruction better than Oasis. Despite the fact that Noel Gallagher was a bona fide good songwriter in his prime (when the third song on the single is pretty good, that's an excellent sign of having a deep bench, and this was a regular occurrence '93-'97), and despite the fact that the best of their music bears little resemblance to the Beatles, most of the attention they brought on themselves was for in-fighting and the constant attempt to be the Beatles. "Married With Children" is the last song on their first album, the only primarily acoustic song, and features one of the central lyrical conceits of the elder Gallagher brother: "you're not half so great as you think you are." But it's lighthearted and not spiteful, and it gets maximum use out of Noel's limited lead-guitar skills. In that, it's an appropriate finish to an album that borrows directly from the New Seekers and T. Rex, borrows indirectly from the Stooges and Small Faces, and spends large parts of its running length sounding like no one in particular (except perhaps conjuring memories of those very good early 70s British upbeat rock bands--T. Rex certainly, also Slade). The problem of Oasis was not the problem of, say, Hemingway, who had one brilliant stylistic innovation that was excellent when new, but couldn't come up with anything new to say after that, and so simply played out the same trick over and over again until in lapsed into parody; the problem of Oasis is that Noel Gallagher was actually quite innovative and talented until he decided that he'd be better off functioning as an amanuensis for those figures he believed were more talented than he was--that it was better to be a Paul McCartney retread than who he actually was.

Oh yes, and their Christmas single, because it 'tis the season: