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Oasis / Definitely Maybe 30th anniversary reissue, reviewed

Is the reissue any good?

By Marc Burrows

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Noel and Liam Gallagher by Paul Slattery

SDE reviews the reissue of Oasis’ 1994 debut album and finds a package that mostly justifies its existence

30th Anniversary special editions are always a difficult proposition … mainly because of the existence of 10th and 20th Anniversary special editions. Deluxe reissues sink and swim on their bonus material, and once you’ve got a couple of landmark anniversaries under your belt there is often very little barrel left to scrape. B-sides, demos and early versions of songs are the bread and butter of the box set, of course, but they’re usually soaked up by the previous editions, and it’s difficult to give subsequent reissues a reason to exist that doesn’t feel purely commercial. Nirvana’s recent 30th anniversary edition of In Utero is a good example, having to rely on live gigs to fill enough space to justify lavish packaging and a hefty price tag. It’s a lovely item, but there’s little there for those who like to get their head under the hood of their favourite record. The vaults have been emptied.

That should be the case for Definitely Maybe, too. Oasis’ enduringly noisy debut got a pretty good 20th anniversary reissue that ticked all the usual boxes back in 2014 — a disc of the original album, remastered, a disc of the B-sides and a disc of demos. In this case though, a piece of the puzzle was missing. Definitely Maybe, you see, was recorded twice. Once at Monnow Valley studios, a fancy residential pile just across the valley from Rockfield, and again a few months later at Cornwall’s Sawmills Studio. The first set of recordings, overseen by producer Dave Bachelor (a friend of Noel Gallagher, best known for working with the Sensational Alex Harvey Band in the 70s) were eventually abandoned. It was felt they were too staid, too lifeless. The band had been recorded in a very 70s band-in-a-big-studio way, everyone playing in isolation, every sound polished. When they turned the tapes over to bosses at Creation records it was felt, quite rightly, that the results were missing the spark of spit, spite and attitude that made Oasis stand out.

Eventually wiser heads sent the band back on the road, getting some dirt under their fingernails and grit in their guitars, before plonking them in Sawmills with just their live engineer to oversee things. This time, sharpened by another 20 or so gigs, they played live with minimal overdubbing. They’d also upgraded to Marshall amps and Gibson Les Pauls — the sound of a beefy rock band. This time the energy caught, and though it took a herculean remixing effort by Owen Morris to shake off the excesses, this time it felt like a classic.

If you wanted to trace the story of that album from demos to disc, the Monnow Valley sessions are an important chapter, and one that was absent in 2014. Whether it was cannily held back with an eye on the future or whether, as Noel Gallagher has claimed, the original tapes were mislabeled and thought lost is up to the reader to decide.

The 30th anniversary edition has them, though. Which is lucky … because that’s pretty much all it has to distinguish itself from earlier reissues. The album-proper is presented here in its 2014 remastered form — something of a shame, as that version buffed some of the spikier edges from Owen Morris’s original mix. It’s a smoother ride, and that’s not necessarily to its advantage: Definitely Maybe should feel like an exhilarating gallop downhill. Some of that rush has faded in the rinse cycle. There’s also no b-sides, no live tracks, no remixes of familiar recordings, none of the usual box-set bonuses we’ve come to expect. If you’re an Oasis fan looking to own the album on vinyl for the first time and don’t want to fork out for an original pressing, then this rather nicely presented package will serve you just fine. If, however, you look forward to these editions in order to find fresh experiences with familiar music and understand something of where they came from, it’s a mixed bag. The eight Monnow Valley recordings, bolstered by some alternative takes from the Sawmill sessions, do indeed give us new versions of familiar songs. They also, sadly, confirm exactly why they were never released to begin with.

Definitely Maybe is a mad dash to the bar. It’s a perfect night in the park with your friends; the one that defines teenage school holidays in your head forever. It’s copping off and cutting loose. It’s freedom

Marc Burrows

Definitely Maybe was the ultimate snapshot of Oasis, it froze them in time as snarling, energised, bolshy and bulletproof, creating an enduring image that was powerful enough to distract from the fact their later music could be substantially less confrontational. ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Star’, even now, sounds huge. A great, screaming air-punch of a song that defined its authors indelibly. “I’m feeling supersonic!’ sings Liam Gallagher on the album’s first single. “Give me gin and tonic!” — a line Richey Edwards, main lyricist on one of 1994’s other great rock albums, said he loved because he could never have written it himself. It sums up the feeling of the album perfectly. It’s a mad dash to the bar. It’s a perfect night in the park with your friends; the one that defines teenage school holidays in your head forever. It’s copping off and cutting loose. It’s freedom. When it pelts full steam ahead, Definitely Maybe is remarkable — anthemic and punk and nostalgic all at once. None of that is true of those original recordings. ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Star’ comes off worst, probably because it’s the one that comes off best when it was done properly. On the original album the song works because it proclaims the band to be something they so audibly are. In this earlier, more anaemic form its arrogance is rather misplaced. ‘Up In The Sky’ paints Oasis as the ‘Rain’-era Beatles-indebted copyists they were often accused of but, at this point, had actually avoided sounding like. ‘Live Forever’ is fine here, but that’s almost worse because the album version is utterly sublime. We know how good it can be. “Just fine” doesn’t cut it. In the Monnow Valley form it feels insubstantial, flimsy, ordinary in comparison. Most of these songs do.

Which is interesting, because fundamentally these are the same songs. The arrangements are near identical, save for the odd bit of swapped backing vocal or finessed intro or outro. The individual elements feel well recorded. Liam’s voice and intonation are pretty much as they are on the final album. It’s hard to jab a finger at one or another element and say “this! This is where they went wrong!”. Sometimes recording is alchemy and magic. On the second attempt they seemed to naturally find a feeling they struggled to manufacture the first time around.

What’s even more interesting is that there’s still a puzzle piece missing. When the band went into the full-pelt recordings at Sawmills they had no grown-up in the room to curb their excesses, the album was essentially unproduced, and so Noel Gallagher gleefully filled spare tracks up with a universe of overdubs and overworking. Apparently the results were horrible, and it was only Owen Morris taking the tapes away to work on in isolation and pulling every trick of stripping back, compressing and EQing in the book that brought them to life. The desk mixes of the Sawmills sessions have never been released. It’s entirely possible that had someone bundled Morris off with the Monnow Valley recordings he could have pulled the same trick.

‘Slide Away’ was recorded at Monnow Valley Studios

There’s evidence for that here, because it’s exactly what he did with ‘Slide Away’, the one recording from the scrapped first sessions that made it to the album. The gorgeous, melancholy and ever-so-slightly epic penultimate track (can anything be “a bit” epic? Apparently so.) was written in the studio at Monnow Valley and recorded straight away, and it’s that version that turns up on Definitely Maybe. The 30th Anniversary edition pulls the opposite trick with ‘Slide Away’ — the first attempt, remixed by Morris, made it onto the album proper, so here we get an alternative version attempted at Sawmills, which feels sloppier and less committed. Maybe what we’re mistaking for alchemical reaction and the unexplainable magic of musical chemistry was just the work of a really good mix engineer all along? We may have to wait for the 40th anniversary edition to find out.

Meanwhile, this Definitely Maybe justifies its existence, mostly, in a couple of ways. The album itself, of course, has retained all of its potency; as alive and feral now as it was in 1994. It’s a shame it’s the slightly inferior 2014 remaster we’re getting rather than either a fresh version or else a revert back to the original, but that tends to be how the game works these days. Even so, it’s still a great sounding, punchy album and as fine an aural statement of intent as you’ll find. This set also succeeds, just about, as a document of the recording process. We can hear the development between the two sessions. We can have fun playing compare and contrast. It’s not the complete story — you need to meld it with the 20th Anniversary version to get the complete demo-to-disc experience, but it’s an interesting snapshot. The artwork is clever, too — removing the band themselves from the familiar room they’ve occupied on the cover since 1994. They’ve become ghosts, while the setting remains. It’s a smart choice. Sadly the liner notes, penned by Creation Boss Alan McGee aren’t available to review at the time of writing.

That said, is this a set you’ll reach for in the future? Are you likely to want to hear the inferior Monnow Valley recordings again? Probably not, if we’re honest — which makes committing them to vinyl something of a waste, particularly when there’s not, at present, an LP edition of the album that features the era’s unimpeachable run of b-sides: ‘Do You Wanna Be A Spaceman’, ‘Half The World Away’, ‘Fade Away’, ‘I Am The Walrus’. It would, arguably, be a better use of two sides of vinyl. As with those desk mixes, it’s something we’ll probably get in 2034. It’ll come around quicker than you think.

Review by Marc Burrows. Definitely Maybe is reissued for its 30th anniversary on Friday 30 August, via Big Brother Recordings.

Tracklisting

Oasis / Definitely Maybe 30th anniversary reissue

Definitely Maybe Oasis / 30th anniversary reissue

    • CD 1 / LPs 1 & 2
      1. Rock ‘n’ Roll Star (Remastered)
      2. Shakermaker (Remastered)
      3. Live Forever (Remastered)
      4. Up In The Sky (Remastered)
      5. Columbia (Remastered)
      6. Supersonic (Remastered)
      7. Sad Song (Remastered)*
      8. Bring It On Down (Remastered)
      9. Cigarettes & Alcohol (Remastered)
      10. Digsy’s Dinner (Remastered)
      11. Slide Away (Remastered)
      12. Married With Children (Remastered)
      * Vinyl only
    • CD 2 / LPs 3 & 4
      1. Rock ‘n’ Roll Star (Monnow Valley Version)
      2. Shakermaker (Monnow Valley Version)
      3. Live Forever (Monnow Valley Version)
      4. Up In The Sky (Monnow Valley Version)
      5. Columbia (Monnow Valley Version)
      6. Bring It On Down (Monnow Valley Version)
      7. Cigarettes & Alcohol (Monnow Valley Version)
      8. Digsy’s Dinner (Monnow Valley Version)
      9. Rock ‘n’ Roll Star (Sawmills Outtake)
      10. Up In The Sky (Sawmills Outtake)
      11. Columbia (Sawmills Outtake)
      12. Bring It On Down (Sawmills Outtake)
      13. Cigarettes & Alcohol (Sawmills Outtake)
      14. Digsy’s Dinner (Sawmills Outtake)
      15. Slide Away (Sawmills Outtake)
      16. Sad Song (Mauldeth Road West Demo, Nov’ 92)

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