Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds - "Council Skies"

      Council Skies is Gallagher’s first full album in six years: a surprising statistic for someone with such a usually reliable release schedule.

Having successfully furthered his psychedelic side with producer David Holmes on those EPs and 2017's Who Built The Moon, Gallagher has kept elements of that adventurousness on his return. Mostly, as implied by its title - taken from a book by illustrator Pete McKee - album four is Gallagher in reflective mood, offset by a musical grandeur.

In place of Holmes, Gallagher’s co-producer is Paul Stacey, a regular associate since engineering Oasis’ Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants in 2000. Trying To Find A World That’s Been And Gone and Dead To The World are classic Gallagher ballads from the Half A World Away playbook, yet the latter jangles along with a subtly intricate playing and chord structures possibly unheard from Gallagher before. For all its ruminative atmosphere, there’s a playfulness to the lyrics as Gallagher informs his muse: “I’m going to write you a song/lt won’t take long/You can change all the words and still get them wrong.”

Rather than subsume himself into Holmes’ world, highlights include Gallagher doing dance music on his own terms as a 54-year-old, with the opening I’m Not Giving Up Tonight essentially a Café Del Mar take on his previous banger AKA...What A Life!, an atypically sensual moment for a songwriter known for hedonism rather than getting carnal. Meanwhile, Think Of A Number is a restless workout imbued with a New Romantic mood, making sense of Gallagher sometimes billing his own remixes under the alias of The Reflex.

That blissed feel peaks on the gorgeous Open The Door, See What You Find, this album’s Champagne Supernova for its unabashed big dreams and bigger chorus, before There She Blows! manages to carry that epic quality into juddering guitars and West Coast harmonies. For anyone missing the simple abandon of Cigarettes And Alcohol or Acquiesce, head to Love Is A Rich Man for proof Gallagher can still do convincing breakneck nonsense when he wants.

In essence, Council Skies is Gallagher regaining his old ground: literally, in Kevin Cummins’ mischievous cover photo of the singer’s gear set up on the site of the centre-circle of his beloved Manchester City’s former stadium, Maine Road.

Hell, Gallagher is even back to writing great B-sides, or deluxe edition bonus tracks as they exist in 2023. The unusually impressive bonus disc features great remixes from Holmes, Pet Shop Boys and - in tribute to Pretty Boy, er, “borrowing heavily” from The Cure’s A Forest - Robert Smith. Best of all, We’re Gonna Get There In The End is a euphoric waltz jauntily at odds with the main album yet a No 1 for months if it had come out in 1995.

Whatever his commercial fortunes now, this is exactly the album Gallagher should be making to remind people how good he can be.