BEADY EYE – DREAMING OF SOME SPACE

And so the end has come for Beady Eye¹, the short-lived answer to Oasis without Noel. They had some relative success releasing 2 albums 2 years apart following the split of Manchester’s finest in 2009. Liam’s development as a songwriter had been a slow but rewarding one, tracing it back to his credentials on The Seahorses’ track Love Me and Leave Me in 1997, but his real breakthrough wasn’t until 2002 Oasis hit Songbird

Most notably, it was a clear sign of respect from Noel merely the fact this had been chosen as a lead single, as it was usually him that penned hit after hit for the band. As time progressed and the members of Oasis changed, Gem Archer and Andy Bell also contributed with some fine material of their own, despite hardly being given the much of an opportunity. Archer’s Love Like A Bomb and Bell’s instrumental piece A Quick Peep particularly showed their promise.

Under the leadership of Liam, there is no doubt Beady Eye, still with Archer and Bell in the ranks, tried even harder to follow the template of “How to be a successful band like The Beatles” or more simply put “How to be like The Beatles” a lot more closely than Oasis; The Beat Goes On from their debut and Ballroom Figured off of BE are the notable tracks for me. A further tribute reared it’s head with b-side Dreaming Of Some Space, a track comprised of recordings played backwards, a trick John Lennon famously pioneered on Tomorrow Never Knows².

What’s brilliant about Dreaming Of Some Space is that it’s a further development of the use of backwards samples. Not only does it sound like a beautifully haunting love song, with a nice structured melody from these seemingly random samples but also the vocals make sense played both backwards and forwards.

Ok, there has definitely been some jiggery pokery in order to make it work, with 2 tracks overlayed (one forwards and one backwards) played at the same tempo with a conscious effort of where the syllables come in with the lyrics, but they have order and meaning, musically the 2 songs work and for me, it was real evidence that the band were musicians in their own right even without their Big Brother³ steering the ship.

So the band now finally have the space they were dreaming of and are going their separate ways, embarking on solo careers and other projects. As a fan the future is definitely promising for those who Noel left behind.

I was going to wrap up this article now but I can’t go without completing these footnotes:

1. Beady Eye clearly chose the name in order to appear close to The Beatles in your record collection (unfortunately The Beastie Boys interrupt proceedings in mine)
2. Of course, many artists have attempted a Tomorrow Never Knows style track, my favourite is The Chemical Brothers’ Setting Sun featuring no other than Mr Noel Gallagher
3. Big Brother Recordings is the Gallagher brother’s record label for distributing Oasis material, since 2000

Thanks muchly