Britpop redux A new beginning for Oasis and a brave new world for Coldplay BY MATT ASHARE

In the run-up up to the May 5 elections that returned Labour Party leader Tony Blair as PM, two things were taken for granted: 1) Blair would retain his position, since he faced no significant opposition; and 2) it would be a pyrrhic victory in that the Clintonesque popularity he had enjoyed prior to Iraq was being eroded with each painful new revelation about the nature of the conflict. Blair had found himself between Iraq and a hard place, thanks to the Bush regime’s insistence on invading Iraq without the UN and his own unwavering support even as the British public turned against the war. David Remnick, in a long "Letter from London" in the May 2 New Yorker, borrowed a term Blair’s aides had coined to characterize his painful march to victory — "the masochism campaign" — as he detailed the daily harassments his subject allowed himself to be subjected to by the British media. "Why does the Labour Party have flowers as its logo? Isn’t that a bit . . . girlie?" was just one of the humiliating questions Blair fielded from a pair of adolescent talk-show hosts. And it only got worse.

Oasis know a thing or two about masochistic campaigns. Ten years ago, they conquered the British press, who celebrated the hard-hitting melodicism of Definitely Maybe (Epic), dubbed them "The Sex Beatles" for their sneering, hook-laden guitar pop, and sent them off to America to do what generations of British bands had been doing since the very first Invasion. "Oasis summed up the sprit of the times: the sense that things have been crap for a very long time and that things were about to get better," says one commentator in the documentary portion of the new, special, tenth-anniversary DualDisc reissue of Definitely Maybe. "There was a positive feeling that we’re going to make it, and that’s a definite message in the whole thing," comments another friend of the band. Still others chime in about the album’s being one of the best debuts of all time.

But even though Kurt Cobain was gone, alternative rock — distinctly American alternative rock — was still king when Oasis hit these shores. And for all the airplay Definitely Maybe generated, the band struggled to gain a foothold. By late ’95, when (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? (Epic) was released, it was clear that US audiences were underwhelmed by what had been labeled Britpop. And as Oasis struggled to fill venues half the size of the arenas they commanded overseas on tours that could, given the obvious tension between singer Liam Gallagher and his songwriting/guitar-playing brother Noel, be considered masochistic, they were dealt one last indignity: their arch Britpop rivals, Blur, scored a Top 10 hit with "Song 2," which borrowed heavily from the Amerindie æsthetics of bands like Pavement. Perhaps, like the Kinks, the Jam, and the Smiths before them, Oasis were simply too British.

I try not to read too much into official band bios, not just because they’re written by record companies and read like advertising copy but because it’s only recently, at major-label Web sites, that the texts of these bios have become available to the general public. And yet Epic’s two-page pitch for the new Oasis album Don’t Believe the Truth demands a little reading between the lines. "Oasis have always been at their best when they didn’t give a fuck," it announces in boldface, suggesting that perhaps the band went off course for a few years by "giving a fuck." Don’t Believe the Truth is trumpeted as a "glorious rebirth. It’s the Oasis that blew you away and an Oasis you’ve never met."

In other words, the self-indulgence, self-pity, and self-importance that began to infect the band in the wake of their great American failure have all been cast aside. Liam and Noel don’t give a shit anymore. They’re not trying to please you, me, or anybody else. They’ve returned to the basics of being a band, and though the Blair government isn’t even half as big a target as the Bush regime for the "anger can be power" equation the Clash set forth 25 years ago, there’s something to be mad about in England again. Don’t Believe the Truth is a product of all that and more, including a camaraderie that has bassist Andy Bell, guitarist Gem Archer, and Liam joining Noel in writing songs. (Zak Starkey rounded out the studio band on drums.)

Don’t Believe the Truth is no American Idiot. Even when Liam has sounded angry, Oasis, who play Mansfield, Massachusetts' Tweeter Center 20th Anniversary show on Friday June 24, have always been more about the escapism of grand anthemic pronouncements framed by wonderwalls of melodic guitars and oversized hooks than about detailing everyday struggles or taking a political stand. And there’s plenty more of that on the new album. The disc opens by leading slowly up to the tuneful Technicolor explosion of "Turn Up the Sun," a driving rocker that hinges on the hopeful mantra "Love one another" but at least makes an apology or two: "I carry madness everywhere I go/Over the border and back to the show/So if you see me and I look right through/You shouldn’t take it as a reflection on you." But the punk I never really heard in Oasis takes hold in the pounding, monochromatic, 1-4-5 chords and political pronouncements of "Mucky Fingers": "You found your god in a paperback/You get your history from the Union Jack/And all your brothers and sisters have gone/And they won’t come back." (On the DVD portion of the DualDisc version of the album, Noel admits that the production of "Mucky Fingers" was inspired by the Velvets’ "Waiting for My Man." Which may be a good argument against these sorts of extras.)

Elsewhere, Noel says more with the title "Part of the Queue" than he does with any particular lyric, but the acoustic guitar-driven walk through the streets of a suddenly strange city does advise "Stand tall, stand proud" in the face of the harsh realities of urban life. I won’t pretend to know Oasis’s political leanings. Most of the DVD interview footage with the band consists of each member’s pointing out how "fuckin’ brilliant" each song is. So, yeah, it’s the same narcissistic Oasis we’ve always loved to hate. But it’s also their first album to make good on the promise of Definitely Maybe. And maybe it really is a "new beginning" for the group.

COLDPLAY, who just released what they’re hoping will be a career-defining album in X&Y (Capitol), never dealt with the challenges Oasis still face in capturing America’s attention. They were fortunate enough to come along in the wake of Radiohead, at a time when Thom Yorke seemed to be opting out of stardom in favor of willfully obscure, art-damaged experiments like Kid A (Capitol). That was released on October 3, 2000; on November 7, the single "Yellow" rushed in to fill the void, and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin was embraced as England’s new "Creep." A Rush of Blood to the Head (Capitol, 2002) cemented Coldplay’s position as purveyors of epic romantic anthems — "Emo for girls" is how one un-PC friend of mine characterized it. Whatever, there’s no denying Martin’s knack for reaching out and tugging on the heartstrings of an audience, male and female, with lines as simple as "And the truth is/I miss you," or his band’s near ascetic devotion to framing his warm rush of softly sung emotions without crowding him.

A couple of weeks back at Avalon, on a quick club tour designed to generate enthusiasm for the release of X&Y, it was hard to pick out the few new tunes. Unlike Radiohead, who at the height of their popularity defied fans’ expectations with Kid A and Amnesiac, Martin seems to want to live up to the lofty goals Coldplay set with the multi-platinum Rush of Blood to the Head. And the first hint of trouble is written right into Capitol’s new Coldplay bio: recording X&Y appears to have been a torturous process that lasted more than a year and a half. Martin was determined to one-up himself with X&Y, and in more than one interview, he’s alluded to U2 as an example of what Coldplay were aiming for. If nothing else, admitting that straight out was a good way to pre-empt criticism. Although not much has changed about the way Coldplay structure their songs (the climactic emotional releases, the grand choruses, the yearning falsetto refrains), the production on X&Y has Rattle and Hum written all over it. The guitars are touched with more than a bit of Edgey echo, the rhythms are both driving and danceable, the soundscapes have a cinematic sweep, and everything sounds as if it had been recorded in a cathedral, right down to the church-like organ outro that leads Martin to contemplate "a sea of faces" as he searches for answers in "a new sun rising" in a voice so close to Bono’s that U2 should share in the royalties.

I’ve never viewed even outright musical theft as a punishable offense. All rock is derivative — it’s what you do with what you steal that matters. Oasis, as childishly annoying as they’ve been at various points in their career, have always put stolen riffs to good use. Coldplay’s appropriation of style is masterful on X&Y; it’s in the realm of substance that they falter. In last Sunday’s Times, Jon Pareles called Coldplay "the decade’s most insufferable band." I wouldn’t have agreed two years or even two months ago. But as Pareles points out, the "calculated self-pity" Martin indulges in is both annoying and insulting. From under a blood-red sky of layered guitars, he proclaims, "I’m on the top/I can’t get back" ("Square One"), as if that were something we should pity him for. Yeah, stardom’s a bitch, but U2 never complained about it, and Radiohead opted out of it altogether for a couple of albums. On X&Y, Martin strains too hard to suffer for us, and his brand of masochism isn’t half as convincing as Blair’s.

Oasis play the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, Mass. on June 24, and Coldplay headline there on August 6; call (617) 228-6000.