Review: Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Garbage offer a rich, rewarding double bill

How low key can you be?

If your name is Noel Gallagher, one half of the progenitors of Oasis, the Manchester rockers who ended their run through a bitter fight between siblings Noel and Liam, surprisingly understated.

At least, that was the impression the musician made on Monday night’s inspiring doubleheader of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Garbage at Budweiser Stage in front of a crowd of 12,000 or so.

It was pretty much 65 minutes of “happy happy, joy joy” when the 10-piece band took to the stage amidst a set that was covered in potted flowers of endless varieties; a bass drum that sported a smiley face logo, and a cardboard cut-out of a person whom one can only guess was soccer-related and had been given his own shrine.

Gallagher never referred to the gesture during his 65-minute set, which front-loaded a handful of songs from the band’s latest album, “Council Skies,” before devoting the last half of the set to some Oasis classics and obscurities.

But it was the joviality of the music that elevated the crowd more than the singer and songwriter’s demeanour: launching into “Pretty Boy,” blessed with a cruising, intoxicating rhythm that melted away one’s resistance to groove along to its hypnotizingly melodic momentum; a porous sound that dominates the new album.

That gliding good-time feel pushed forward with “Council Skies,” “We’re Gonna Get There in the End,” “Open the Door, See What You Find” and “Easy Now,” each song stippled with a bright infusion of background vocals by three unidentified women or an injection of sunny keyboard vistas.

And through it all, Gallagher remained nonchalant: singing and strumming on each number, seemingly unfazed by it all.

When more flowers were thrown at him during “The Masterplan,” Gallagher sidestepped them and later remarked, “What was that? Some kind of ritual here that I don’t know about?”

There was a noticeable switch in the tone of the music once Gallagher dipped into the Oasis catalogue; a harder, rockier edge — even if the uplifting themes of chasing your dreams and taking whatever opportunity comes your way remained in the equation.

“Little by Little” and “Half the World Away” were crowd singalongs — in one poignant moment, Gallagher dedicated “Live Forever” to a nine-year-old girl in the front row who had brought a poster proclaiming that this “is my first Noel show.”

This version of “Live Forever” was more acoustic-driven and played more tenderly than its recorded version, and the sensitivity of the arrangement was a set highlight.

An unexpected, lighthearted cover of Bob Dylan’s “Quinn the Eskimo” and a rousingly anthemic “Don’t Look Back in Anger” from the Oasis years closed a memorable set.

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds — who have now been around longer than Oasis — were a noticeable contrast from Madison, Wisconsin, vets Garbage in almost every way.

When the five-piece band — Shirley Manson on vocals; production mastermind Butch Vig on drums; Daniel Shulman on bass; and Duke Erikson and Steve Marker on guitars — busted onstage with “Supervixen,” the night-and-day difference in musical kilowattage hit like a hammer.

The concert openers greeted the audience with a wall of guitar sound that, at first, drowned out Manson, her blond hair pulled back into a bun as she sported a pinstripe ensemble with a polka-dot tie and white blouse.

The singer stayed at the microphone and drank in the crowd, and her noncommittal facial expression seemed to indicate she didn’t want to be there.

Turns out it was a premature assessment: as Garbage got deeper into the show, the Scottish-born Manson loosened and livened up — even offering a hilarious reason for why her band got paired with Gallagher’s for the joint tour as she introduced the song “Special.”

“I should explain how this tour came together because it’s a strange match,” she deadpanned. “I was trekking in Peru. I climbed Machu Picchu. And just as I was climbing over the peak, who did I meet? I saw Mr. Noel Gallagher standing there on a vision quest. I said, ‘Hello, Noel Gallagher’ and he said, ‘Hello, Shirley Manson,’ and I said, ‘Would you fancy going on tour together?’ and he said, ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ And here we are tonight!”

Garbage rolled out the hits like “#1 Crush,” “Push It” and “Stupid Girl,” but it wasn’t until their cover of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Cities in Dust” that Manson truly became uninhibited and began dancing around the stage.

While all the songs were performed flawlessly, there was an endearing twist to “Only Happy When It Rains” when the band started off slowly and thoughtfully before resetting the song to its original upbeat tempo and getting a number of audience members on their feet to dance to the tune, which is about enjoying complicated relationships rather than simplifying life.

The fact that Garbage’s material is more critical and pointed than Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds’ somewhat flossy optimism provided a good, rounded view of music from all sides of the spectrum.

Overall, it was a soaringly rich and rewarding doubleheader that was anything but a waste.

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Garbage

July 3 at the Budweiser Stage, Toronto

SHARE: