The Masterplan instantly validates its existence by promoting the band’s most beloved B-side into the momentous album opener it deserved to be. Originally appearing on the stopgap “Some Might Say” single released between Definitely Maybe and Morning Glory, “Acquiesce” is the ultimate Oasis song: a sibling rivalry in musical form, a dramatic title-fight showdown between Liam’s swagger and Noel’s sweetness that sees the brothers trading verses and choruses instead of insults and fisticuffs. After Noel had ceded all lead vocals to Liam on Definitely Maybe, “Acquiesce” was the first real sign that the elder Gallagher wasn’t just the silent tunesmith communicating via his brother’s megaphone wail: He was an equally vital voice within the songs as well.
Given that Noel was the one entrusted with writing all the B-sides, often when no other bandmates were around, it’s no surprise that The Masterplan features a higher ratio of Noel-sung tunes than any other Oasis album. And since Noel knew he could never out-snarl his brother, he carved out a lane as the humble counterpoint to Liam’s cocksure charisma. His Masterplan turns are by the far most tender tunes here, and in the greater Oasis discography for that matter: “Half the World Away” (reportedly Paul Weller’s favorite Oasis choon) and “Going Nowhere” exude a Bacharach-esque elegance that’s defiantly at odds with this band’s lager-lout reputation, while the string-swept solemnity of “The Masterplan” manages to expand Oasis’ musical and emotional vocabulary without tipping the scales into Be Here Now-level bombast.
There are several other fine B-sides in this vein that were excluded from The Masterplan, probably because, at a certain point, an Oasis record with too many ballads and acoustic serenades wouldn’t really feel like a proper Oasis record anymore. The Masterplan’s sensitive turns are balanced by corkers like “Headshrinker,” which sounds like Oasis pummeling the Faces’ “Stay With Me” until it resembles Raw Power. That said, they could’ve easily swapped the bloozy “Swamp Song”—an elongated version of Morning Glory’s mid-album interstitial—and their droning distension of the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” for snappier selections, like the joyous brassy “Round Are Way” or the early rave-up “Alive,” the closest this band ever got to shoegaze. But if The Masterplan’s murky midsection reminds us that aimless jamming was never this band’s strongest suit, the album is ultimately a testament to Noel’s fine-tuning skills. Just as T. Rex could rewrite “Bang a Gong” as “Telegram Sam,” and the Kinks could clone “You Really Got Me” into “All Day and All of the Night,” Noel was a master at refreshing his winning formulas: Surely, there’s a parallel universe where “Talk Tonight” is a karaoke anthem on par with “Wonderwall” (right down to the similar “you saved me” sentiment), and if you’re sick of hearing “Supersonic” for the millionth time, soundalike sibling “Listen Up” is there for you the next time you want to do it with a doctor on a helicopter.
But even when the songs sound the same, their perspectives tend to shift: If Definitely Maybe’s iconic opening track, “Rock and Roll Star,” was like Oasis’ version of The Secret—a self-fulfilling prophecy of imminent success—then “Fade Away” is its equally energized but spiritually dejected flipside, a vision of an alternate timeline where the Gallaghers’ arena-conquering aspirations gave way to day jobs. “While we’re living, the dreams we had as children fade away,” Liam cautioned, back at a time when Oasis’ destiny had yet to be written. But if that song was born of a hardscrabble past they’d never have to revisit, by 1998, it spoke to a different kind of lost idealism. At the time of The Masterplan’s release, all of Oasis’ dreams were made—even after the critical drubbing they took for Be Here Now, they were still the biggest band in Britain. As the subsequent decade of diminishing returns would show, even if Oasis’ rock-star dreams never faded, the hunger and passion that fuelled those fantasies—and, by extension, these songs—certainly did.
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