Oasis Concert review from Oakland

Oasis Concert review from Oakland

After a range of shows in the UK to promote DOYS, Oasis are touring America to turn on the locals to the new songs. Oasis played Oakland and recently LA.

Here's the Inside Bay Area's Oakland Review.

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Many have wondered why Oasis, one of the most popular live acts in its native U.K., isn’t a bigger draw on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

It’s a good question, given how consistently great the Britpop band’s albums have been over the last 15 years, and one that will probably be debated as long as the highly volatile group sticks together.

The basis for a solid hypothesis, however, could be readily found during the Manchester troupe’s gig on Wednesday night at the Oracle Arena in Oakland. The 100-minute set was low on energy, personality, theatrics and razzle-dazzle, all of which usually goes over like gangbusters with American audiences.

As with past Bay Area outings, Oasis just showed up, plugged in and performed the songs in a straight-forward, straight-ahead manner. That’s just how the band does it – or, maybe, that’s just how the musicians do it on this side of the pond.

Rick Allen, a longtime Oasis fan from the U.K. that is now living in San Francisco, was at the Oakland show and was shocked at what he saw.

“If they’d come out onstage like this in England, with this lack of energy, they’d get booed off the stage after two songs,” he said.

To that point, the 6,000-or-so fans in attendance – a less than half-full house - should feel grateful that they weren’t watching the concert in England. For if the band had been booed off the stage after two songs, listeners would have missed 19 other tunes, many of which rank among the best pop-rock numbers in recent history.

The set list was terrific, a proper sampling of the many wonders found on the band’s seven studio albums. The group – led by the brothers Gallagher, vocalist Liam and guitarist-vocalist Noel – paid particular attention to its most recent offering, “Dig Out Your Soul,” but also played most of the old hits.

The songs are so well-written, full of anthemic sing-along choruses, and feature so many wickedly slick guitar parts that they more than compensate for any performance issues. Indeed, it was hard to worry about a lack of energy from the band when one was singing along, at top volume, to such smashes as “Rock ‘N’ Roll Star,” “The Importance of Being Idle” and “Slide Away.”

The players did seem a bit more motivated toward the end of the night, closing up the main set with a fiery run through “Wonderwall” and “Supersonic” then returning for a four-tune encore that included a psychedelic cover of the Beatles’ “I am the Walrus.”

In all, it was a much better offering than what the fans saw immediately prior with Ryan Adams and the Cardinals. The hipster alt-country band leader, a true critics’ favorite, set the table for Oasis and did even less than the headliner to connect with the crowd.

Each person has his or her own list of the most-overrated performers in the business, and Adams most definitely belongs on mine.