As a compilation title,
Back the Way We Came is so clever it's a wonder it's never been used before. It's also a title that fits
Noel Gallagher, who has specialized in finding the unexpected within the familiar. He sharpened these skills as the leader of
Oasis and carried them over into his
High Flying Birds, the group of pros he assembled after he got fed up dealing with the amateurish antics of his brother
Liam.
Back the Way We Came arrived upon the tenth anniversary of the first album from
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds and, as a record, it has a surprisingly cohesive narrative. The first disc contains songs from the first two
HFB albums, records
Noel made when he was determined to be tasteful and controlled in a way
Oasis never was. The second opens with "Black Star Dancing," a non-LP disco single from 2019 that announces how
Gallagher wound up making brighter, vibrant music after he got his muso ambitions out of his system. It's an interesting trajectory -- and one that bodes well for his next decade -- and it makes for a more absorbing listen than nearly all of the
High Flying Birds albums, its consistency due in part to how the second disc collects all his non-LP angles from the back half of the 2010s, a move that also is decidedly consumer-friendly. (If that wasn't enough to hook fans, there's an edition of
Back the Way We Came with a third disc containing instrumentals, remixes, demos, and acoustic versions of the core
HFB catalog, odds, and ends that are surprisingly satisfying when gathered together.) ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine