Your thoughts and words won't last forever

Oasis - Time Flies 1994-2009

In 1994 Oasis kicked down the door of the emerging Britpop scene and swaggered around jeering the indie kids. Their belief in themselves was so adament and it wasn't long before they were changing the way the scene looked, with the feather cut hair do and tracky tops, not to mention spoke (mad ferrit).
This cartoonesque demeanor and the in-fighting in the band was just a lovable characteristic to accompany their first album. A raw, sparse soundscape that contributes four singles to this collection. Liam's voice snarls like a dog straining at a leash and it captures perfectly the need to hold onto a dream throughout the mundanity of everyday life.
Subsequent albums built up that sound in pristine layers, losing some of the edge and passion from early on. It didn't affect their dominence of the mainstream of their belief in themselves.
However, this compilation makes little sense. The order of the tracks is seemingly random and the sparse swagger of early singles jars against the bloated pomposity of more recent offerings. Each song is something special in it's own way, echoing with the ghosts of others tunes, but the collection as a whole is confusing.
Until the secret track kicks in at the end of disc two. Sunday Morning Call makes sense of it all. As it takes flight for the chorus is pulls unexectedly at that unamed thing inside, a giddy feeling of heightened emotion. At once, in this one song, Oasis manage to make you want them to never go away and say goodbye to us all for good.
And it gives you a sign, a sign that the singles where never the best bit about this band. Their b-sides were where they really took flight and they turned their love of past bands into something that was really their own.
This compilation has its moments and it's interesting to re-organise the tracklisting to have an aural timeline of where they came from and went to. And if it is their mainstream moments you want 26 singles including eight number ones is hard to argue. But to really get the best and remember this band for what they believed they were go and find The Masterplan.