Noel Gallagher - Shoot A Hole Into The Sun

Serving as the b-side to new Noel Gallagher single Dream On is this: The first taste of Noel's much-touted collaboration with electronica outfit Amorphous Androgynous. Shoot A Hole Into The Sun is a bewildering medley of sky-piercing strings, funky basslines and guitar twangs that seem to echo back through all history. Think Primal Scream's monumental Screamadelica album, and you'll be on the right track.

It's an epic, sprawling trippy uber-psychedelic reworking of previous single If I Had A Gun and is pretty much the sort of stuff to straight-on blow your mind. It's movie-like in its expansive grandeur, and skillfully keeps all the integrity of Noel's lyrics and songwriting talent whilst twinning them with a genuinely horizon-broadening backing. This is no remix, more a first tantalising glimpse of just how brilliant the second Noel solo LP is surely going to be.

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - If I Had A Gun...

Between the dance-inspired stylings of What A Life and the stomp of The Death of You And Me, it is new single If I Had A Gun that is perhaps best representative of Noel Gallagher's solo album as a whole.

Striking out for a beautifully melodic standpoint between his Wonderwall glory days and the most classic, anthemic of choruses, it is a testament to Noel's continuing songwriting talents writ large.

The real charm is that at heart, the song is so simple, so effortless in what it attempts; yet within a few listens it already sounds like something ingrained into your memory for a decade or more. Noel is the eternal everyman, the voice-piece of a nation - just as he was in the 90s, so to now, still plugging away the plight of the normal man. He speaks from the heart, to the heart - and in the slow, methodic strum of If I Had A Gun, he makes that connection every time.

As the tail end of 2011 sweeps round, we can safely say Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds easily has a place within our Top 10 albums of the year; and from an artist with a catalogue already so peerlessly good as Noel/Oasis, that stands as some achievement.

If I Had A Gun... is released on the 26th December accompanied by exclusive b-side I’d Pick You Every Time.