Dig Out Your Soul
- Oasis
- Band Name: Oasis
- Record Label: Warner Bros/Elektra/Atlantic
- Release Date: Oct 7, 2008
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What's striking about Dig Out Your Soul is how its relentless onslaught of sound proves as enduring as the tunes.
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More than anything else, there’s a feeling that Dig Out Your Soul might actually be their best album in over a decade. In other words, not quite the fabled, oft-promised “Best one since fookin’ "Definitely Maybe!"" but certainly the best one since fookin’ "...Morning Glory."
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Those follow-up albums were disappointments because, aside from a catchy song or two, they were tedious. Dig Out Your Soul defies this trend and is their most compelling offering in years.
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80With this balanced collection of solid rockers, more airy, toned-down tracks and far less self-indulgent noodling, Oasis prove they can learn from their mistakes.
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It won't win them any new fans, but those that believed the truth last time will dig this.
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Noel Gallagher comes up with a half-dozen tracks as good as the classic-rock epic 'The Turning,' or 'The Shock of the Lightning,' which swaggers as confidently as Oasis did a dozen years ago.
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70Noel Gallagher wrote two more tunes here, both excellent. Unfortunately, age has softened his heart, and he cedes the album's other half to his bandmates (including lead-singing brother Liam), who offer subpar material.
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70To that end, and overabundant allusions to The Beatles aside, Dig Out Your Soul is a feat in its own right.
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70Dig Out Your Soul, however, is the sound of a band rediscovering its snarl.
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Noel provides the best songs on Dig Out Your Soul, although his bandmates certainly can’t be accused of slacking in their efforts. The problem with this one is that it’s front-loaded with Noel’s songs, which makes the proceedings start to drag a bit.
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Qualitywise, most of the tracks here are more ''Bungalow Bill'' than ''Eleanor Rigby.''
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Dig Out Your Soul continues Oasis' relatively impressive late-period resurgence.
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There's a forward motion to the backward glances, but the spiritual-philosophical bent of many of the songs suggests that brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher preferred the era when rock stars set out to explore the meaning of life rather than maximize the monetization of their brand.
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60If there are moments when the feted snap and snarl of yore amounts to little more than ramming generic blues licks down the audience's throat, they're tempered with moments of discovery like the lysergic 'To Be Where There's Life' and 'Falling Down' which displays an uncharacteristic lightness of touch.
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On a cursory listen to Dig Out Your Soul, it's hard not to think 'yeah, it's Oasis' and then unwittingly switch off - not through boredom or distraction, but because it's all so comfortable and, well, familiar.
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60Dig Out Your Soul might not be the sound of envelopes being pushed, but its mix of kitchen-sink production and too many vague songs mark a deviation from business as usual that ultimately fails to deliver. [Nov 2008, p.105]
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60It's an uninspiring ending to a record that it's best faces up to some pretty downbeat truths and thus seems to fit right into the current national mood.
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60Overall, Dig Out Your Soul is a dark, heavy, chart-snubbing record that acts Oasis’s age (main songwriter Noel Gallagher is 42) and is their first in eons that doesn’t seem desperate to please. Oasis have their devil back.
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60A second Oasis album to better "Standing On the Shoulders Of Giants" and "Heathen Chemistry," but one too, that promises so much only to fall so short. [Nov 208, p.104]
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60Oasis can still occasionally produce songs suggestive of the breezy insouciance that marked their early years--the new single 'The Shock of the Lightning' among them--but more often on Dig Out Your Soul, they sound as though they're killing themselves trying to come up with something that'll do.
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It sounds so good; really, it sounds better than it is.
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60For those who have happily stuck around this long already Dig Out certainly won’t be the straw that breaks the camel’s back--by all means, it lightens the load quite considerably. But it does so with the dawning realisation that, 17 years and seven albums in, this is a high point in a career deficient in high points.
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This album shows that they know what they're good at and that their latter-day acoustic balladry and epic wanking were getting tired. [Fall 2008, p.77]
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Dig Out Your Soul is an almost comically generic Oasis release, from its preponderance of plodding midtempo rockers ("Bag It Up," "Waiting for the Rapture") to the vaguely Indian raga-flavored psychedelic anthems ("To Be Where There's Life").
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49for now we're stuck with Dig Out Your Soul, which like every Oasis album from 1997's "Be Here Now" onward, makes cursory gestures toward making the band's mod-rock more modernist, before reverting back to the same ol', same ol'.
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40Dig Out Your Soul isn’t the worst record Oasis have produced, but even the heavily shat-upon (an unfairly so, in this writer’s opinion) Heathen Chemistry was comfortable within its own skin.
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An overall sound that’s been compressed and flatlined into one continuous buzz, this sounds like a tired band that had already gone through the motions before it even started.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 68 out of 81
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Mixed: 7 out of 81
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Negative: 6 out of 81
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DaveN8
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5
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8