Time Flies... 1994-2009

Album Review

Wasting no time in the wake of the Gallagher brothers sudden 2009 implosion, Sony released the deluxe Time Flies 1994-2009 retrospective in the summer of 2010, just in time for the 15th anniversary of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? The driving idea behind Time Flies is to collect all 27 of Oasis’ British A-sides, a simple idea that would seem to fit one of the great singles band, but sticking to the singles winds up leaving many great songs behind, including their manifesto “Rock & Roll Star,” “Champagne Supernova,” the lovely “Talk Tonight,” and Noel and Liam’s duet “Acquiesce,” among many tremendous B-sides, “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory” and “Champagne Supernova,” to name a few. The latter is added to the U.S. version, since it was an actual hit in America (the U.S. version does not contain “Sunday Morning Call”), but it doesn’t change the fact that Time Flies winds up missing more staples than it should…enough to make it miss the definitive designation it should carry. Nevertheless, Time Flies is a better overview than 2006’s Stop the Clocks, of which it shares ten tracks (11 in the U.S. incarnation) and not just because it’s more generous by a measure of almost ten tracks. Time Flies does a better job of rounding up the highlights from their patchy turn-of-the-millennium albums — actually, it emphasizes Heathen Chemistry almost a bit too much, with its five tracks outweighing the number of selections from Definitely Maybe and Morning Glory — and has space for selections from their smashing final album Dig Out Your Soul, including sneaking on “Lord Don’t Slow Me Down,” which makes its album debut here along with the 1994 Christmas single “Whatever.” All that’s enough to make this the Oasis comp of choice until the definitive collection comes around. [Time Flies is improved considerably in its deluxe edition which is the U.K. double-disc expanded by a third disc containing a concert from The Roundhouse in London on July 21, 2009 and a DVD containing all of the band’s music videos with commentary. The live show was recorded just weeks before Noel and Liam’s final blow-out and proves that the band was far from tuckered out; they still packed a wallop. But the DVD is the real news: of all the Brit-pop titans of the ‘90s, Oasis was the only one without a home video collection of their videos, and this has them all, including clips made for the U.S., and that’s enough of a treat even without the tantalizing bonus of Noel and Liam commentary.]