Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds have shared their latest tune, ‘Open The Door, See What You Find’.
The fifth single taken from the former Oasis rocker’s upcoming LP ‘Council Skies’ features Noel’s pal Johnny Marr on guitar and it’s about being content with who you are and where you are in life.
He said of the track: “Lyrically, the premise is that at a certain point in your life, you look in a mirror and you see all you’ve ever been and all you’re ever going to be. It’s about being happy with that. Being happy with where you are in life, with who you are, and where you’re going. Life is good!”
The new song follows ‘Pretty Boy’ (also featuring Johnny Marr), ‘Easy Now’, ‘Dead To The World’, and the album’s title track.
The 56-year-old musician recently teased that “not one song” is “stylistically” the same on his upcoming album.
‘Council Skies’ is his first High Flying Birds record that features his “actual” live band, and although it’s “very eclectic”, it’s not as “far out” as his experimental psychedelic rock effort, ‘Who Built The Moon?’.
In a cover interview with the Mancunian, Noel said: “This is the first album which my actual band all played on, because usually I would do it all myself.
“When you eventually get to hear it, it’s very eclectic. It’s not as far out as [2017’s] ‘Who Built The Moon?’, but there’s a run of the first 6 or 7 songs, not one song that follows the other is the same stylistically.”
As for the lyrical content, the rocker – who is going through a divorce from his second wife, Sara MacDonald, after 22 years together – says it’s a very “reflective album”.
He shared: “If you can put yourself back into that period, we didn’t really know what the future was going to be because none of us had lived through a pandemic before. We were kind of stood, looking at the skies going ‘What the f***? What is the next few years gonna be like?’ […] I was just reflecting on how I’d got to where I’d got to and I had a lot of time to sit and think about it. It’s a reflective album, more than anything.”
Noel – who has sons Donovan, 15, and Sonny, 12, with Sara, and 23-year-old daughter Anais Gallagher with first wife Meg Mathews – is set to return to his home city of Manchester to perform a massive outdoor gig at Wythenshawe Park on August 26, which couldn’t be more fitting, as it’s in the middle of the largest council estate.
He told the publication: “My promoters were saying that they were thinking of doing this regular thing in Wythenshawe Park, and this is before they knew anything about the album. Ironically, this is gonna be my first British gig promoting an album called ‘Council Skies’, in the middle of the biggest council estate in Europe. It just all fell into place which is f****** magical.”
‘Council Skies’ is released on June 2.