Sour Times: some sour words on the Oasis reunion

There are probably hundreds of ways of criticising Oasis (the music, the "cultural phenomenon", the people) which would be valid - or at least interesting - but just these two say plenty in my opinion. Criticism number one:

Er, yeah, I get you (I think) Arbeitology. And number two is this Guardian piece by veteran music crictic Simon Price, with stuff about Liam Gallagher's alleged homophobia, Noel's kneejerk political conservatism, the brothers' utterly dull "working-class" swagger (a one-note joke that was never funny, never mind for 30 years) and - let's not forget - their backward-looking, plodding music. I agree with both of these criticisms, numbers one and two. Arbeitology presumably goes with his seemingly excessive tweet because - like plenty of people before him - he's aware that the MOR rockishness of Britpop (and its slavish boosters in the music press and tabloids) effectively killed off - or heavily reduced - mainstream interest in a whole host of innovative black music which was gaining a big foothold in the UK at the same time - jungle, post-rave hardcore/techno, triphop, dancehall etc. Meanwhile, the Guardian article basically speaks for itself. I don't really share Simon Price's musical tastes (his reverence for the Manic Street Preachers, for the Cure or even for Neil Kulkarni). But he surely scores hit after hit with this takedown of the mighty Oasis. As a former resident of tough-as-nails Burnage myself, I can confirm that it is - or at least was back in the early nineties when I was there around the time when Oasis were hooking up with Alan McGee - a perfectly pleasant, peaceful suburb of south Manchester. Leafy, nice parks, people walking their dogs, that kind of thing. Are you hard enough to walk down Fog Lane without a posse? Er yeah, maybe. Er yeah, definitely. No, looking back - with or without anger - I reckon Oasis were mostly a freakish construct of media hype and in this maybe they have a little in common with the Sex Pistols or even their beloved Beatles. Bashing out this tiresome blog of mine this evening I've been listening back to Definitely Maybe for the first time in decades. In my opinion this still much-praised album sounds completely mediocre - overblown, repetitive, with a lot of tiresome lyrics, and - overall - with song after mid-paced song outstaying its welcome. In particular, the vocal style really grates - even on Cigarettes And Alcohol where at least there's a bit of effort to vary the approach (on top of what sounds like a T-Rex riff). God, man, make it stop. I'll admit to briefly liking this LP (for part of 1995 anyway), but I think I was probably under the influence of stress at the time - the result of a hasty move to London, having zero money, drinking too much (actually, this was usually fine). That said, the mainstream - or mainstream-ish - album I really liked during 1995 was Portishead's Dummy. It came out at almost exactly the same time as Definitely Maybe (August 1994) but sounds like it could have been released in a different century. Or emerged from a different planet. This was music genuinely doing something new with old sounds to often chilling effect. Scroll forward 30 years and this week's hype around the Oasis reunion is - depressingly enough - over-ripe nostalgia multiplied by ... yet more nostalgia. Nostalgia for the nostalgia-soaked Oasis music/media craze of 1994-5. About the future I only can reminisce, as Pete Shelley once sang, and the Oasis reboot is future-denying nostalgia eating itself to death. Yeah man, we're living in sour times ...