Oasis 2025 -- 90's comfort food

The Oasis reunion is finally happening and it already feels bigger than any other "reunion" tour in recent years.  In his review of their kick-off concert in Cardiff, The Independent's Mark Beaumont half-heartedly tries being cynical about it, with a slight few backhanded compliments thrown in, but in the end it didn't matter.  He gives them a five star review.   

Yes, both Gallagher's have been touring these same songs with their own bands for years.  Last year at this time, Liam had a solo Definitely Maybe 30th anniversary tour, appearing in arena around the UK.  How is it, just one year later, that he can appear in stadiums singing the exact same songs, headlining the 90's nostalgia tour to end them all?  Much like the Smashing Pumpkins reunion, or the fifty Fleetwood Mac reunions where somebody left and then came back, having the original members on stage working together is far more than a technicality.  If it was only about hearing the songs, then Oasis cover bands could competently headline stadiums.  

It’s clear to me now that the '90s occupy a cultural space much like the '60s did during the '90s themselves.  In the late 80's/early 90's, many iconic classic rock acts from the previous generation were back together and making headlines.  Dylan became a cultural darling again.  The Who and the Rolling Stones did reunion tours that earned a gajillion dollars.  The Beatles released their "Anthology" series. Johnny Cash made a wholly unexpected comeback.   The Velvet Underground put aside their differences for five minutes and reunited.  Neil Young was recast as the godfather of grunge after losing his way for most of the 80's.  And so on.  There was a prevailing sense that the '60s were still the pinnacle of musical culture, and that nothing could ever surpass them.  All the controversies of the 60's that had seeped their way into the Western (mainly American) consciousness were mostly swept under the rug.  Civil rights?  The turmoil of 1968?  Vietnam?  Those were yesterday's problems, thoroughly left behind us, and we were left with the unequaled brilliance of the greatest bands of the rock era.  Those who came of age during the 60's scoffed at the idea of "my" 90's music being relevant enough to be remembered even in five years' time, let alone thirty.

And now, I believe the 90's are mostly viewed through rose-coloured glasses by people who weren't there or have hazy memories of it.  The decade of happy-go-lucky "Friends".  The end of the Cold War followed by world peace breaking out (Jesus Jones promised me that it happened!)  Singing along to Oasis songs with all one's friends.  When one needs to get away from the turmoil in the world today, one can always count on 90's TV, movies, and music to take you back to a time when there were few worries in the world save for Y2K angst.  In the 90's, the POTUS could get his dick sucked in the Oval Office and not get MeToo'ed into oblivion!  And people loved him for this, he left office with the highest approval ratings of any President in decades.  Viewed from the quagmire that is 2025, clearly the 90's were a utopia.  

Of course, that's not how it really was.  But Oasis, and the current Oasis reunion represent the apex of the 90's comfort food culture.  There probably isn't another band (at least not in the UK) that allows you to suspend reality and daydream about the imagined perfection of the 90's.  In the US, Oasis were just one of many heavy-rotation MTV bands of the day.  "What's the Story Morning Glory" was just the 10th biggest selling album of 1996 in the US.  It's the third biggest seller of all time in the UK.  And that gives them a healing power than few other bands can match.  What about their Britpop peers?  Please.  Blur: too kooky, standoff-ishly clever.  Pulp: despite a remarkable comeback this year with a #1 UK album, their songs are all about stressful affairs, scandalous trysts, a constant reminder of the uncertainty of the times.  Suede: too weird, too fancy, not anthemic enough.  All of them are wildly successful.  None of them had a hope of symbolizing the carefree hope and grandeur like Oasis can.      

 

It took me eight years to "get" Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk"

I had never heard of this album until it was featured in Melody Maker's "Unknown Pleasures" book in 1995.  A few more years passed before I heard a note of music from it, via the Fleetwood Mac Greatest Hits compilation.  After that, more than a decade passed until I heard the full album.  I bought the 2CD reissue, wrote a post about it, and all these years later I mostly agree with everything I wrote.  Nevertheless, I didn't particularly like "Tusk".  I would dig it out once in a while and subject myself to it for the sake of investigating it's merits because there's little doubt that it's notable album in rock history by one of rock's all-time great bands.  I had read the essays, heard about the revisionist histories, knew about its critical resuscitation but still couldn't find much to like about it.

You see, when I was growing up and became "aware" of the FM radio rotation, just about every track from "Rumours" was regularly played on the radio -- some five years after it was first released.  In the 80's, both "Mirage" and "Tango In the Night" were massive hit albums that ensured Fleetwood Mac's position as radio (and music video!) stalwarts through the end of the decade.  "Tusk", on the other hand, might as well have never existed.  The songs weren't on the radio, nobody talked about it, and nobody seemed to own it.  

"Tusk" rode the post-"Rumours" momentum wave and sold millions of copies (it is a double album, so each sale counted as two copies).  Why exactly did it become invisible for the bulk of the next twenty years?  There was no "Rumours hangover" -- nobody rejected "Tusk" because they were tired of FM's dominance.  Tracks from "Rumours" remained on the radio for years, so clearly the public wanted more Fleetwood Mac.  Michael Jackson didn't experience a "Thriller hangover", huge albums are regularly followed by more huge albums.  In "Unknown Pleasures", Simon Reynolds puts most of the blame at Lindsey Buckingham's feet, suggesting that his wonton experiments sabotaged "Tusk"'s commercial prospects.  He's certainly correct on this point.  But he also paints Buckingham as a charlatan looking to remain relevant for the punk and new wave crowd, and failing.  This does not seem to be reflected in then-contemporary reviews.  

In Stephen Holden's marvelous review for Rolling Stone (December 13, 1979), he calls Buckingham the "artistic lynchpin" of "Tusk", with his compositions being the glue that provides a semblance of cohesion to the album. With remarkable insight, he notes that the era of the multi-million dollar audiophile megaproduction must be reaching its end, while at the same time standing slack-jawed about how wonderful it all sounds.  Robert Christgau also praised "Tusk" (assigning it a B+ grade) and Buckingham's songs in particular.  Contemporary critics recognized that Buckingham wasn't the problem, rather, he was the standout.  With audiences, it was obviously a different story.

Listening to it now, I finally understand what Holden wrote about more than four decades ago. On "Tusk",  Buckingham draws inspiration from post punk and transforms it in a way that only he can.  He practically invents a new genre for himself, linking crude noisemaking with state-of-the-art studio technology, combining his signature gossamer guitars with lo-fi country-tonk.   Stevie Nicks is top form as well.  While "Sara" is the most well-known, each of the five songs she contributed is excellent.   The weak link, unfortunately is McVie.  With the exception of "Think About Me", none of her songs come close to the spark she brought to "Rumours".  "Over and Over" is pleasant enough, but it's a continuation of "Rumours", i.e. exactly the sound of a "Rumours 2" that Buckingham sought so desperately to avoid.  

The running order does nobody any favours.  It's a disjointed patchwork of competing ideologies between the three songwriters.  The mood shifts with every song and the album never gets a chance to establish any kind of rhythm.    This would be less of a problem in the CD/mp3 age, because you could easily program a new track order.  But with LP's, listeners were just as likely to get frustrated and not bother to flip the record over.  They should have given each of them an entire album side to do as they wished, but that might have made it feel less like a Fleetwood Mac album and more like three new solo albums by its main composers. 

Is "Tusk" better than "Rumours", as some seem to suggest (even Mick Fleetwood claims it's his favourite FM album)?  Let's not be ridiculous.  But it's a very rewarding album and a fascinating experiment from a band that wasn't known for doing wild experiments during the post-Buckingham/Nicks era.