Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, The Palais Theatre, 31st January 2012

No pics tonight, just a ticket to go and watch the talented one from Oasis.

Ditching his whiny brother has been good for Noel Gallagher. His new project – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – delivered a brilliant first album that only served to reinforce the thought that perhaps Noel had saved up some of his best work while Oasis were putting out some ordinary material.

In the plush surrounds of St Kilda’s Palais Theatre, Noel and the aforementioned High Flyers made a low key entrance, with a remix of If I Had A Gun… blasting over the PA.

With a minimum of fuss, they delivered two Oasis tunes back to back - It’s Good To Be Free (a B side from the 1994 Whatever single) and the more recent Mucky Fingers. With two back catalogue songs out of the way, Noel ripped into the opening track from his current album, Everybody’s on The Run.

“Do you all ‘ave to sit down?”

“No? Well stand the fuck up then”

A fully seated venue, the Palais crowd forgot about that annoying couple behind them who had said “SIT DOWN!” when the band came on stage and stayed on their feet for the rest of the night .

The Kinks style throwback Dream On followed, as it does on the album, and If I Had a Gun... rounded out three in a row.

Noel himself seemed to be tiring of the bloke behind me yelling out requests. “SUPERSONIC! LITTLE BY LITTLE!” – just an example. Not one to mince his words, Gallagher threw down some rules – “I didn’t spend 20 minutes 6 months ago working out this setlist to listen to you yell out random shit. Stop it”. It received a round of applause not heard in Melbourne since a chair umpire at the Australian Open reminded patrons to turn off their mobile phones last week. (more…)