Dig Out Your Soul

In a January 2007 interview for NME, Noel Gallagher gave new details on his vision for the album: "All the tunes I've written recently have been on the kind of acoustic side, you know? But for the next record I really fancy doing a record where we just completely throw the kitchen sink at it", he explained. "We haven't done that since Be Here Now. I'd like to get, like, a 100-piece orchestra and choirs and all that stuff. I think since Standing on the Shoulder of Giants we've been trying to prove a point of just bass, drums, guitar and vocals and nothing fancy. But I kind of like fancy! I'd like to make an absolutely fucking colossal album. You know? Like literally two orchestras, stuff like that."[1]

In October 2007, Noel revealed more about the record to BBC 6 Music: "Funnily enough, we all write separately, but for some reason all the songs sound like they've got a common thread. We've been focusing round the grooves more this time, the last album was quite 'songy,' if that makes any sense, I don't know. But it was quite 'songy:' "The Importance of Being Idle", "Let There Be Love" – it was quite a British, retro, 60s sounding album. This is kinda focusing round the grooves more. Saying that, we've only done two tracks but all the demos that we've done are great." Noel also revealed details about his lyrics for his new songs: "I've literally got nothing left to write about: I've wrote about being a youth, and I've wrote about being a rock star, and I've wrote about living life in the big city. I've been re-visiting some of my more psychedelic trips of a younger man, because I remember them all you see...putting them to music."[2]

In a November 2007 interview with Reuters, singer Liam Gallagher revealed more details on how the record was going: "All the songs are wrote (sic), this record's gonna be fuckin' rockin'. There's no acoustic on it, man. We rehearsed about 10 tunes before coming in. Three are mine. Some are Noel's, some are Gem's, some are Andy's. We're there for a long time, so we just keep pickin' em off the tree, man. Some are sounding really fucking heavy, and then we're picking some out, and you go, 'Well that doesn't sit with that, right.' So we just keep moving about. We've got plenty of songs. We're not gonna go bored." Gallagher also revealed that the record,"Will have everything thrown at it. Let's just hope that Noel's learnt his lesson in the studio this time!"[3]

In a 15 June 2008 interview with talkSPORT, Noel said the album was "colossal", "rockin'" and added "it's gonna sound great live, which is the most important thing." Between various songs on the album are several interludes (such as the sound of someone walking down a beach). Oasis have described these as "bits inbetween".[4]

For the recording of Dig Out Your Soul, Oasis reunited with Don't Believe the Truth producer Dave Sardy at Abbey Road Studios in Westminster.[5] Sessions began in July/August 2007 and concluded around Christmas with intermittent breaks.[2][3][6][7] There was a brief period of confusion in which it seemed that Oasis would have had to forgo recording at Abbey Road due to U2 having reserved the recording areas that Oasis wished to use far in advance. The issue was resolved when Noel bought U2's spot in cash without the band's knowledge; this was possible due to the fact that the studios gave preference to cash payments over credit, which U2 had been booked with.[8] Zak Starkey was made an official member during the sessions.[9][10]

The album art was created by artist Julian House. Ralph Steadman suggested the phrase "Dig Out Your Soul" for the album's title, a line in the song "To Be Where There's Life".[5] According to Noel, "We gave him [Steadman] the album, he listened to it and we gave him the lyrics… He came back with a list of titles and one of them was Dig Out Your Soul.[5] Noel's only instruction was "As long as we don’t call it Oasis I don’t give a fuck".[5] Mixing took place in Los Angeles, and was slowed by constant equipment failure.[11] After the album was completed and the band began discussions with several record companies with which to release it. In August 2008, Reprise Records announced that it would distribute Dig Out Your Soul in North America. The songs "(I Wanna Live in a Dream in My) Record Machine" and "Come on It's Alright" were planned to be on Dig Out Your Soul, but were ultimately left off as according to Noel, Liam "ran out of time" to record them.[12]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	66/100[21]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[22]
The A.V. Club	B−[23]
Entertainment Weekly	B−[24]
The Guardian	[25]
The Irish Times	[26]
Los Angeles Times	[27]
NME	8/10[28]
Pitchfork	4.9/10[29]
Rolling Stone	[30]
Spin	[31]

Critical reception of the album was generally positive, with a score of 66/100 on Metacritic. Many critics lauded Dig Out Your Soul as one of the strongest albums ever recorded by the band, and noted that "it seems Oasis have made something that can happily play alongside Morning Glory."[32] Jonathan Cohen of Billboard says that with Dig Out Your Soul, the group "Gets back to its stripped-down rock roots" and that the opening song, "Bag It Up" harks back to Definitely Maybe's "Columbia".[33] Luke Bainbridge of The Observer gave the album 4 stars out of 5, saying "You could say that if Definitely Maybe was their Stone Roses, Dig Out Your Soul is their Second Coming. It won't win them any new fans, but those that believed the truth last time will dig this."[34]

Not all reviews have been positive, however; Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone magazine gave the album a 2½ out of 5 stars.[35] Rosen said of the new album that, "Dig Out Your Soul is an almost comically generic Oasis release, from its preponderance of plodding midtempo rockers ("Bag It Up", "Waiting for the Rapture") to the vaguely Indian raga-flavored psychedelic anthems ("To Be Where There's Life")."[35]

In the UK, the album sold 90,000 copies on its first day of release, making it the second fastest selling album of 2008, behind Coldplay's Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. It debuted on the UK Albums Chart at number 1, with first week sales of 200,866 copies, making it the 51st fastest selling album ever in the UK. The album debuted at number 5 on the Billboard 200 in the US, with 53,000 copies sold.[36] It is the highest chart position of any Oasis album in the US since 1997's Be Here Now which debuted at number 2, but fewer total opening week sales than Don't Believe the Truth.[36] It has spent a total of 32 weeks in the French Albums Chart,[37] the most ever by any Oasis album.

• Number 38 in Spin magazine's "Best Albums of 2008" list.[38]
• Number 32 in Q magazine's "Recordings of 2008" list.[39]
• Number 22 in NME magazine's "Best Albums of 2008" list.[40]
• In 2011 it was voted number 207 in Q magazine's "250 Best Albums of Q's Lifetime" list featuring albums from 1986 to 2011.[41]

Bonus tracks

Oasis

• Liam Gallagher – lead vocals, tambourine, acoustic guitar, tin whistle
• Noel Gallagher – guitars, backing vocals, lead vocals on (3, 6, 7), keyboards, electronics, percussion, drums (11), melodica (11)[42]
• Gem Archer – guitars, keyboards, bass guitar
• Andy Bell – bass guitar, guitar, tambura, keyboard

Additional personnel

• Zak Starkey – drums, percussion, handclaps (except track 11)
• Jay Darlington – mellotron and electronics on "Falling Down",
• The National In-Choir – backing vocals on "The Turning"
• Dave Sardy – production, mixing
• Ryan Castle – engineering
• Andy Brohard – Pro Tools editing
• Cameron Barton – engineering
• Chris Bolster – engineering
• Ghian Wright – engineering
• Ian Cooper – mastering
• Alec Gomez/Lawrie Medina – assistant

• Dig Out Your Soul at YouTube (streamed copy where licensed)