[Artwork by BAXTER ORR]
BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Noel and Liam Gallagher always understood the importance of being obvious – fist-pumping guitar chords, bass lines that go bump-and-grind in the night, bobblehead drumbeats, “moon in June” rhymes bleated through the clenched teeth of Liam’s gloriously Lennon-esque whine – which is why Oasis ruled Britannia in the ’90s. In 2009, Noel Gallagher finally quit the champagne supernova of post-fame Oasis when the sibling rivalry with Liam escalated to total warfare, and he has just embarked on a solo career marked by the release of Noel Gallagher’s High Flyin’ Birds and a world tour that on Friday night brought him to the Academy of Music. Gallagher seemed happy just to be here now, occasionally wringing self-effacing humor out of his trademark imperial hubris. When a woman in the front row informed him that she’d named her son after him, he asked her if “he was as handsome as me” before contemplating aloud the possibility that in 20 years, his namesake would take his place on the Academy of Music stage. MORE