Noel Gallagher Slams Reflektor, Praises Yeezus In 2013 Recap

Noel Gallagher Slams Reflektor, Praises Yeezus In 2013 Recap

Here’s how former Oasis co-leader Noel Gallagher describes his own personal 2013: “Fucking had a shit year. All I’ve done is sit around the house and become a fucking hypochondriac. Dog-shit year. Can’t wait until it’s over.” But Gallagher also has something to say about the year in music, and he’s said them in similarly quotable fashion. Let’s dive in.

The biggest surprise, perhaps, is that Gallagher, never previously a Kanye West fan (and previously a vocal detractor of the idea of a rapper headlining Glastonbury) loves Yeezus, telling Rolling Stone, “It’s fucking great. I really like it. Particularly [‘Black Skinhead’] – it’s fucking out there, do you know what I mean? It’s got a great low-fi, punk vibe to it.” Gallagher also has nice things to say about David Bowie’s The Next Day (“nobody has the right to be that fucking good at this point in their career”), Disclosure’s Settle (“it’s got a really old-school fucking acid house vibe to it, which I really fucking like”), and half of Arctic Monkeys’ AM. He also says that he’s “not interested” in Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories but that “Get Lucky” is “so effortless and brilliant and now.”

Gallagher is not as charitable in discussing Arcade Fire’s Reflektor:

Did you hear Arcade Fire’s new album?
I haven’t heard it. Anybody that comes back with a double album, to me, needs to pry themselves out of their own asshole. This is not the Seventies, okay? Go and ask Billy Corgan about a double album. Who has the fucking time, in 2013, to sit through 45 minutes of a single album? How arrogant are these people to think that you’ve got an hour and a half to listen to a fucking record?

Did you see that they’ve asked people to wear formal wear or costumes at their shows?
[Sighs] Well, what’s the point of that? Do you know what the point of that is? That is to take away from the shit disco that’s coming out of the speakers. Because everybody’s dressed as one of the Three Musketeers on acid. “What was the gig like?” “I don’t know, everyone was dressed as a teddy bear in the Seventies.” “Yeah, but what was the gig like?” “Ah, fuck knows, man, I have no idea. I was dressed as a flying saucer.” “Yeah, but what was the gig like?” “Fuck knows. I don’t know. Seen Cheech and Chong, there, though.” Not for me.’

You know Bowie sings backup on one of Arcade Fire’s new songs, right?
Oh, that’s a shame.

He also has hot fire for Miley Cyrus and for Lady Gaga. The best part of the whole interview is probably where he describes the pop-star arms race for attention: “I could go to the Rolling Stone office and fucking shit on top of a boiled egg, right? And people would go, ‘Wow, fucking hell, that’s outrageous!’ But is it any good? No, because, essentially, it’s just a shit on top of a boiled egg. That’s all it is.” Really, the whole interview is generally amazing, in a foulmouthed drunk-uncle sort of way, and you can (and should) read it here.

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