Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – 7 May 2015, New York

Noel Gallagher is known to have a no-holds barred attitude in conversations. At one point during his show at Webster Hall on May 7th, he told the quiet, rapt and possible fearful audience, “For fuck’s sake, say something!” But perhaps it wasn’t that they were shy or afraid, though he had been smart with the crowd in Toronto apparently, it was that they were saving their voices to sing along with the frontman and his ace flock of “birds”, Tim Smith on lead guitar, Russ Pritchard on bass, Mikey Rowe on keyboards and Jeremy Stacey on drums, plus a three piece horn section. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds have just released their second album Chasing Yesterday on Gallagher’s label Sour Mash Records. Their show is a powerful evening of rock that combines material from both NGHFB albums and some of the now-classic Oasis material into an awesome sounding show that I wished could have been longer. (The setlist appears to remain the same throughout the tour.)

Gallagher is a straight forward rocker who avoids tedious tomfoolery and lets the music speak for itself. Gallagher knows how to craft a song and he knows how to perform. On occasion, he switched been acoustic and electric guitars, notably between the Oasis song, “Champagne Supernova”, and his current single, “Ballad of the Mighty I” and there was a backdrop of visuals behind the band, but this hardly felt like pandering. The fans enjoyed every minute of the great live music like “The Death of You and Me”, performed with the horn section (Gallagher didn’t even know their name they were so new to the tour), and new album highlight, the timeless sound of “Riverman”. With songs like this, even if I were to exclude the tremendous rush experienced by of singing-along with a thousand people for set-closer “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, I would say the High Flying Birds are a must-see show for rock music fans.