Live Review - Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds & Ride - Vivary Park, Taunton - 24th August 2023

There’s something about the summer that immensely suits Ride.

Perhaps it’s nostalgia: their feedback-heavy, hazy sonic soundscapes evoke memories and images of summers past from the first act of their career over thirty years ago. Even more so in late August, with the lower sun casting a particular kind of light over our green and pleasant land that the band so aptly soundtrack.

Not that the Oxford gang are a heritage act. Arguably the most creatively successful of the reformed acts of the era, the two albums released in that period sit comfortably with Nowhere and Going Blank Again.

Indeed, their walk-on music (‘R.I.D.E.’, taken from 2019’s This Is Not A Safe Place) is more blistering and industrial than anything from the nineties. Before a note is played, being the good egg he is Andy Bell congratulates Phil Smith (Noel Gallagher’s long-time tour DJ) on his choice of music.

https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/08/review-noel-gallagher-ride-taunton/