Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Royce Hall - 11-17-11

Chris Walker

​Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
Royce Hall, UCLA
11-17-11

Better than...Liam's nasally singing on "Wonderwall"

What do Noel Gallagher, Paul McCartney, Q-Tip, and David Lee Roth all have in common?

Each have attempted solo careers after their immensely popular groups, to varying degrees of success. In Noel's Gallagher's case, last night he unveiled his new solo endeavor, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, here for the first time.

Chris Walker

​After leaving multiplatinum band Oasis in August, 2009 following a now infamous sibling altercation -- push came to shove, apparently, when Liam allegedly threw a plum at him and chased after him with a guitar -- Noel is still bearing the baggage of his storied sibling rivalry. Liam has fueled the fire by deciding to continue touring with the rest of the band members under the name Beady Eye. (Look for a hard-hitting interview with Liam in this space in front of his show in town early next month.) So Noel has retaliated with his High Flying Birds.

An early show on his world tour, Noel opened with two crowd-pleasing Oasis covers, "(It's Good) To be Free" and "Mucky Fingers," and he then wasted no time in rattling off an uninterrupted run of six new tracks from the bands' self-titled debut, released in the U.S. last Tuesday.

The crowd certainly didn't mind. While the sing-a-long Oasis tunes were clearly the night's winners, they were also receptive to the songs they didn't know. They bobbed their heads and nearly started dancing for the group's experimental quasi-disco number "AKA...What a Life!"