Liam Gallagher
Aware Super Theatre
Sydney, Australia
23 July 2022
Other than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, there are few British bands that have altered my perception of music and felt instinctively empowering like the Gallagher brothers’ approach to channelling their art.
With their musical emissions, meaningful gibberish and overall outlook on the world they managed to instantaneously establish themselves as one of my favourite bands as a juvenile delinquent.
The cultural significance and strength of what was created by them in the mid-1990s not only pervaded my world but hogging the airwaves with their tunes, also every facet of music and fashion agnostic of boundaries and classes, with the implications of their legacy still reverberating to this day.
Having recently pulled off a triumphant return to Knebworth by himself and with a new album under his belt, it was about time to witness parka clad Liam Gallagher again swaggering around on stage to deliver the goods.
With a setlist dominated by timeless, generationally loved escapist Oasis classics, the tested and tried was complemented by an eclectic melange known from his solo work, including an unearthed Beady Eye song and tracks from his lyrically more positively centred, vulnerable and empathetic third album, i.e. C’mon You Know.
Framed and set in scene against a backdrop of bombastic visuals and backed by a duo of gospel singers along with a tight six piece band, LG sounded better than ever as he effortlessly and vocally in finest form meandered through a powerful and focussed set that apart from the usual abrasive, insouciant bravado and display of playful arrogance felt like a cathartic and life-affirming jubilation, rather than an exercise in nostalgia.
As Liam lingered on stage after the band had left as the anthemic “Give the people what they want” by The O’Jays came on, there could have not been a more fitting outro to bookend an evening that saw one of the more enduring figures in British music do exactly that with a flawless victory lap of classics that only deepened the pleasure that was had the first time around.
