With the constant (fruitless) talk of an Oasis reunion, it seems Noel Gallagher has found a way of giving people what they want without including the rest of the band – an album of new Oasis songs. And it looks like there's a Gibson signature model of his favourite acoustic guitar coming too.
We say 'new' Oasis songs – they'll be new to us, but not their songwriter. Noel has been using pandemic downtime to sift through his old ideas and has found a whole album's worth of song that he's planning to re-work and record.
"I’m going to record them. Some are quite old-school"
“I’ve listed the proper songs and there were 14,” he told the Matt Morgan podcast. "They just fell by the wayside of various projects from down the years. I’m going to record them. Some are quite old-school."
He added: "I was looking at the tracklisting and thinking: ‘Actually, f***ing hell, no I’d approach that song differently’. It’s been very interesting."
Noel's most recent release is a a demo version of new song We're Gonna Get There In The End – marking a return to his strummier style following more sonically experimental High Flying Birds releases such as the Black Star Dancing EP.
It's fitting that 2021 will also see the release of a long-mooted Gibson signature model based on the guitar that Noel used to channel many Oasis songs; his old 'Adidas' J-150.
“Gibson is doing a signature model of that one," Noel told Guitar.com in 2019. "I sent it there to be photographed, the grain and the whole thing. It’s not even a J-200, you know. It’s a J-150 that I just took off the shelf in London, played it, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll take it.’ I never thought anything of it. But I’ve written some great fucking songs on that guitar."
In their January 2021 announcement, Gibson confirmed a Noel Gallagher signature acoustic is coming but further details on model, spec and date were not offered.
“They only made them for a couple of years," Noel added on the J-150. "In fact, just this year I found a blonde one, which I got off Reverb.com. I try not to buy guitars off the internet, because you’ve got to fucking hold them first, and it was a bit expensive, but I thought, ‘Fuck it. I’ll just go for it.’ It arrived and it was amazing. I’m playing it on tour with U2.”
The model is easily mistaken for Gibson's popular J-200 at first glance - and was a more affordable alternative when it was available between 1999 and 2005. It loses the J-200's neck and headstock binding to remain a lesser known jumbo gem.
Noel's has also proved to be a favourite for the stage over the years too…
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