ALBUM OF THE WEEK; Oasis Dig Out Your Soul ***.

Byline: john dingwall

LOOK, we all know the release of an Oasis album is an event.

Like a new Indiana Jones movie, you know exactly what you are going to get and yet you are more of ten than not, untimately, disappointed.

Just as George Lucas can't do dialogue, Oasis can't do melody. Or rarely, anyway.

Having long recovered from the low point in their careers, 1997's Be Here Now, 11 years later the Gallagher brothers are still taking magical mystery tours through the Beatles' back catalogue to deliver something that sits between homage and pastiche. Was Noel listening to Back In The USSR before penning the opening track Bag It Up?

Because Oasis continue to wear the rock lineage on their sleeves even if The Turning has Stone Roses stitched in capital letters.

On Waiting For The Rapture, the lyric "She put an apple in my eye" and references to a "merry go round" and "revolution in her head" could so easily be subconscious references to the Beatles' record label, a variation on Helter Skelter and so on.

It's as if Oasis are suffering a mid-life crisis and nobody has the nerve to admit that they are in the altogether.

Because make no mistake. This album is going to No1.

Dad rock is bigger than ever even if the music industry is in meltdown.

And Oasis have played it safe.

In fact, so dull is this album at times, critics have been wont to describe it as experimental because, say, I'm Outta Time includes a sample of a John Lennon interview shortly before his assassination in 1980.

Give Peace A Chance handclaps introduce the Plastic Ono Band homage that is High Horse Lady. Falling Down attempts to buck the Beatles ripoff theory that Oasis detractors come up with time and again and, admittedly, it is harder to pigeonhole.

Time for a trip to the mountaintop with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for Gem Archer's psychedelic To Be Where There's Life, which deserves as least another three and a half minute bliss-out.

The only Andy Bell composition, The Nature Of Reality, is sandwiched between Ain't Got Nothing and the final track Soldier On, two of three songs penned by Liam. The latter sounds tired.

Married with children, Noel's little brother may be mono browed and monosyllabic and at times it might seem, for Oasis brand 2008, less is MOR.

But the truth is, the band that spoke to a generation with songs such as Champagne Supernova and She's Electric seem to have nothing left to say.

Which is, perhaps, why Oasis seem happy to soldier on with what turns out to be the ultimate Beatles tribute album.