In a quiet moment after “Roll With It,” Noel hurriedly mutters something into the mic—a joke, I think, about Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing fiasco. It dawns on me that his demeanor has nothing to do with indifference or hostility. For the first time, he looks nervous. Liam vanishes and Noel plays a suite of his own, starting with “Talk Tonight.” It would be an exaggeration to say a hush falls upon the stadium, but warmth and goodwill emanate from the crowd. This is evidently a bigger deal for studious Noel—ever the reunion holdout—than his shenanigan-loving brother.
He gives the floor to the crowd to conclude “Half the World Away” in almighty unison. “Little by Little,” the only song on the setlist recorded after Oasis’ 1990s heyday, is a marvel: Backed by 100,000 lungs, it transforms into a prog-rock torch song with jet-engine lead guitar and slashes of astral soloing.
Liam reappears with maracas for “D’You Know What I Mean?,” “Stand by Me,” and “Cast No Shadow,” a plodding suite that threatens to briefly lose the crowd. At least, it would, were the crowd not already committed to turning every scrap of recognizable melody into a soul-rousing terrace chant. It ought to be a problem that Oasis’ medium-pace songs just sound like their fast ones done slowly. It ought to be a problem that all such songs fall in the baggy second half of the main set. It ought to be a problem when Liam asks if it is worth “the £40,000 you paid for the ticket” and takes it upon himself to answer: “Yeahhhh.” And these things are problems. But inside the stadium, problems do not seem to matter.
“Slide Away” is a black-magic powerhouse full of melodic origami. “Whatever,” never featured on an album, is recited word-for-word by a bowl-cut boy in the crowd no older than Dig Out Your Soul. And suddenly there is “Live Forever”—a song so alive with possibility, so burnished with yearning melancholy, that its shallow sentiments fill your heart to the brim, even if Liam has more passion than breath in his lungs. “This is our last one, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star,’” he tells us (nobody believes this), and once more he sounds amazing, spinning off-piste, riffing and ad-libbing, showing us the hiding places in a song he has lived inside for 30 years. They play the finale as an incendiary waltz, guitar squeals tumbling into a furnace of feedback, as Joey Waronker’s hired guns pound the drums for dear life.
Noel returns for the encore and introduces the band, including “uber fucking legend” Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs, but not Liam, who sits out as Noel eases into “The Masterplan.” During “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” yellow bees adorn the screen, the symbol of the 2017 Manchester concert bombing, to which the song became an impromptu elegy. Many of Noel’s best ballads thrive on being romantically inarticulate, but attach them to a tragedy and they are ripe for emotional demolition. I have the strangest thought: I wish Liam was on stage to see this.
