…so here’s a Gallagher, bringing the “sick, fucking funny, well tasty,” and oh right, the CONTROVERSY!
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[4.20]
Micha Cavaseno: Pity Liam Gallagher. He is a man wedded to a misremembered memory that grows more garish with each passing moment. Every day, Oasis’ glory becomes more and more distant, and the heights seem as fantastic and unreachable as the Beatlemania they were often flung against. So much of “Wall of Glass” is made to feel like Liam’s finally back to his prime, his voice nearing the sneery glides that crested along clouds on those early records and the guitar squall echoing a time where he led the charge, draped in a Union Jack, looking like a lobotomized and e-handy angel to save us from the swarming rot of dancepop and over-pretentious Pop with capital Ps. Of course, that’s the problem here, in those ghastly choirs and the overzealous guitar honk: now Liam’s just as bad as anything.
[3]
Thomas Inskeep: Greg Kurstin gives Liam the co-producer and co-writer he needs to succeed at pop music (just listen to Beady Eye — or better yet, don’t) without having Noel by his side. “Wall of Glass” works hard to split the difference between Oasis-style rock and chart-ready pop, but it’s an oddly-fitted straitjacket for Liam.
[5]
Alex Clifton: God, Liam Gallagher’s a stinker. He needs someone else there to temper him, otherwise his ego (and his voice) overwhelm any good he could possibly do. This song symbolizes everything I hate about him. The vocals, guitar, and harmonica all reach a similar level of whine; there’s a weird line in there about One Direction, marking the second time in recent weeks that a Liam has made a jab at 1D in a song; and the entire song does, indeed, feel like a wall of glass shattering around me, to the point where I have a headache. Where’s Noel when you need him?
[1]
Austin Brown: First things first: if you’re gonna take aim at some of the most consistent British pop-rockers this decade, make sure your own songwriting chops are in order first. I’m not sold on Gallagher’s attempt to split the difference between… Crazy Horse and the Arctic Monkeys? The harmonica in particular sounds like it belongs in a different song, unmoored as it is from the slight funk and Gallagher’s still-arresting swagger.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: Slower or with more snarl this could almost have passed for a Noel Gallagher composition, albeit one from Oasis’s fattier period. Someone involved almost has a way with a tune, and I’m not mean enough to assume it isn’t Liam. But what an ugly-sounding record this is, the harmonica and backing vocals just plonked artlessly on top of a meat-and-potatoes rock song as if that would magically give it some real flavour. You could flail around sweatily to this at a gig, but it’s too clattery to cut loose played loud, and as an opening salvo to pop radio? Nah, the listeners don’t even know you’re born, Liam.
[4]
Ryo Miyauchi: Whatever comes in contact with those guitars would shatter like glass, really. The riffs are compressed to the core, like Liam was trying to re-engineer the jet-engine roar of “D’You Know What I Mean?” This may have the volume to be a relative of the ’97 banger, but it’s nowhere close to its ego — for all the vitriol that makes him a viral retweet, this is a very polite gesture to get the pests off his lawn.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Wall of glass: noun; the often-impenetrable expectations that ensconce members of notorious supergroups once they try to go solo. How fucking Gallagher is it to contort the glass-houses metaphor into something that A) blithely, unthinkingly evokes the glass ceiling and/or cliff, and B) like the rock that is apparently a boomerang here, gets himself this owned? About as much as it is to sneer about One Direction and “designer vaccinations” — you get the idea he wanted to “We Didn’t Start the Fire” it — over mechanically separated Oasis rock product. I should really hate this more than I do.
[6]
Alfred Soto: “Slip into the hole up your ass/You might get a pass.”
[1]
Jibril Yassin: While the mix is a total mess, clipping all over the place and clearly meant to be played loud over radios, it’s nice hearing Liam over something not entirely seem out of place on an Arctic Monkeys album — something modern! Definitely Maybe came out eons ago, and it’s a nice snapshot of Oasis being a band somewhat with the times before falling to their Beatles worship. “Wall of Glass” invokes that spirit with its glossy sheen, funky bridge, and bluesy stomp. It also does a great job at excusing the fact we allowed Beady Eye to happen.
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: Trapped within the exceedingly dull parameters of acceptable transgression, Liam Gallagher once more has a song to match. The man is so retrograde that he’s practically Daniel O’Donnell with a guitar, and thankfully that comparison does imply a commitment to melody, on this occasion at least. “Wall of Glass” actually does sound like it belongs on the radio: focused and punchy, unlike much he’s done post-Oasis. The promise of more of the same is less enticing, but even if such criticisms get old, this type of music can’t, because there’s no way it was ever young.
[6]