Sydney, Australia (Enmore Theatre)

SETLIST:
1. (It's Good) To Be Free
2. Talk Tonight
3. Fade Away
4. Cast No Shadow
5. The Importance Of Being Idle
6. Listen Up
7. Half The World Away
8. Wonderwall
9. Whatever
10. Slide Away
11. Strawberry Fields Forever
12. Don't Look Back In Anger
13. Married With Children

PRESENT:
Noel Gallagher
Gem Archer
Terry Kirkbride

REVIEWS:
Sydney Morning Herald
George Palathingal

Gallagher makes every fan a winner

When Noel Gallagher described himself, a handful of songs into this set, as "the former most important man in the music business", he got a typically big laugh. But he wasn't kidding.

Oasis, the band started by Gallagher's younger brother, Liam, but wrestled into shape by Noel in 1994, were unstoppable then; a force of nature that didn't just change British music, they changed the country, providing the soundtrack for the rise of a new government and restoring a sense of national pride. (Maybe they overdid that last thing, but let's not get off track.)

Noel Gallagher seems to know the band never really recovered musically after the drug excesses following their monster second album (What's the Story) Morning Glory, otherwise you'd guess he wouldn't spend this sublime evening playing a 13-song semi-acoustic set featuring only one song from after 1995. We got blissful B-sides, rearranged and thoroughly refreshed versions of classic singles, album tracks that could (and arguably should) have been singles and one joyous cover version.

Accompanied only by fellow Oasis man Gem Archer on organ and guitar and their percussionist mate, Terry Kirkbride, Gallagher didn't just remind us of a bunch of glorious songs, he stripped them back and sang them so soulfully, in some instances we suddenly realised there was more to those bombastic anthems than we may have first noticed. The line "her soul slides away" in Don't Look Back in Anger, for example, was suddenly crushing.

The warm arrangements of Wonderwall, in a new-country style, and a speeded-up Whatever that tipped its hat to Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues proved more surprising than the rendition of the Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever - damn that information superhighway - but all were wonderful. Cast No Shadow and Slide Away sent shivers down your spine the way they did the first time you heard them. Half the World Away was simultaneously tender and jubilant.

By the end of the hour-long set - no encore, but it finished perfectly anyway with the wit and bile of Married with Children and the lyrics "goodbye, I'm going home" - Noel Gallagher and his friends had sent every fan home with a better Christmas present than they could have hoped for.

VIDEO:
Clip of Fade Away and pre-gig interview with Noel at ninemsn video