With their Live ’25 reunion shows, Gem, Andy, Bonehead, Noel, Liam (and Joey) pulled off the impossible, gave us the improbable, and did what, two years since the bombshell announcement, still seems immeasurable: they put the band back together.
Hot on the heels of a fantastic new documentary that takes us deep inside the belly of the beats, Oasis have just announced more shows around the world for 2027. And the film highlights something that news of another tour confirms — the band's resurgence and monumental success has officially eclipsed accusations of operating under the mechanics of banal nostalgia.
Instead, they’ve returned to the stage and re-entered the psyche of a country (and a world) that needs another unifying cultural moment to bring us all together and get, dare we say it, excited about something again.
And that something is a sound, an attitude, and a catalogue of songs that come from an era where streaming services didn’t exist, AI music wasn’t even a plot device in dystopian novels (by the way, check out my Christmas album) and Max Martin wasn’t quite yet old enough to devilishly and incongruously team up with Ryan Tedder and Pro Tools to make every hit tune on the radio sound exactly the same for the next 30 years.
Of course, Oasis are the only band that could’ve given us this moment.
A large part of the seismic effect is timing; when their comeback was initially announced, Covid’s devastating impact on both mass social gatherings and the music industry at large was only very recently in the rear-view mirror.
This particular band of brothers coming back around like Jim in The Vicar of Dibley (no, no, no, no, no, no, no…yes!) after their literal brotherhood has lain in extremely public tatters for almost two decades — and when face masks and hand sanitisers are only now beginning to leave the collective consciousness behind — feels like a hearty pendulum swing in the opposite direction.
It’s a contrast that helps propel the film along while also keeping its guard up and stopping it from reaching its full potential.
Titled uninspiringly but perhaps inevitably Don’t Look Back in Anger — surely nodding to the song, the arc of reconciliation and D. A. Pennebaker’s 1967 Bob Dylan concert tour film, the two-hour journey stars Liam as the confident returning hero and Noel as the at first reluctant and worried sidekick; we see him sullen and even somewhat shaken by his younger sibling careening into rehearsals, belting out the set and leaving while the last song is still being played through without saying a word to his bandmates.
This leads a sheepish Noel to seek reassurance from them himself — he wonders, is our kid even enjoying himself, and admits a newfound respect for the voice of the band he’s finally agreed to reassemble.
The apprehension lasts until Oasis hit their stride during the opening Cardiff gig, which we’re treated to a good chunk of, and which looks and sounds suitably euphoric for the level of anticipatory energetic release that has been building for those on the stage and those in the crowd ever since the long-ago days of 2009.
Noel’s legs turn to jelly, Liam’s 16-year-old vision board of his band and his brother once again beside him melds into the moment of his actual current living reality, and everyone is once again, against all odds, mad fer it.
It’s ’90s energy colliding with decades of improved personal maturity, skill, reverence and musicianship, and Oasis are now ready to take that extremely seriously.
Noel may have been the holdout but you realise quickly that this is really Liam’s reunion — without his solo career ascending to the heights of Knebworth and playing with Bonehead all these years, it’s hard to imagine The Chief ever getting an inkling that he was missing a trick (and, let’s be honest, a payday) by refusing to bury the hatchet.
As the film takes us around the world, with fan stories and a smidgen of on-camera brotherly chit-chat, you can’t help but be glad for them, and for all of us, that he did.
Frustratingly, the lack of new or illuminating interview footage with both brothers in conversation is where the film falls short.
For overly invested fans who’ve watched the Gallaghers trade insults and barbs in the press for years and try unsuccessfully to cast off the ever-looming shadow of their band by going it alone and assuring us the great wait (or should that be weight?) would, in fact, never be over, the actual mechanics of how we got to the opening chords of Hello remain the elephant in the room.
Who made the first move?
When was the idea first floated, and why?
What made Noel change his mind?
Did Liam actually need some time to think about it?
What was the first thing they said to each other after so long, where was the meeting, and how did they manage to keep it a secret?
What does Peggy think of it all?
Spending 5 or 10 minutes using the film to answer these questions would go some way to curtail the repeated knack the band has for, as Liam puts it, 'doing fans' heads in' over the years.
That’s not what we get, but what Don’t Look Back in Anger does give us — including, for the first time, a glimpse into the band’s political leanings (Oasis is ‘not some right-wing thing’, opines Noel, ‘all are welcome’) — is more than enough to send the faithful reluctantly back to Ticketmaster for 2027.