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Dig Out Your Soul

Oasis

Reprise Records

Streaming at myspace.com/oasis

Let's face it, the new Oasis album won't win the band any new fans. Even for diehards listening to a preview yesterday on MySpace of Dig Out Your Soul ahead of the album's launch next week, the first third threatens the dreaded Be Here Now complex. Overextended endings, overlayered guitars, these are reminiscent of the band's 1997 album in which access overran substance. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Oasis is perennially fixing a hole, namely the aesthetic gap between Magical Mystery Tour and the White Album and between the Stone Roses' two and only studio albums. But the fun and surprise have been in how incongruously Noel and Liam Gallagher have gone about this task. As with the natural, deadpan humour of the brothers' interviews, it's impossible to determine whether they simply fail to get it at times or, as Noel has suggested throughout his career, they get it all too much.

The Dear Prudence-like guitar line ending the song The Turning? The harmonica line in S oldier On cribbing Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond? Or simply the inexplicable second "the" in the leadoff single The Shock of the Lightning? There's really no explanation. And after repeated listens, with the strum-along guitars and wet-blanket bass invariably flowing into transportive melodies, it's pointless to ask. Unlike Lenny Kravitz, who began his career filling the Abbey Road- Let It Be gap, Oasis has never been about mere mimicry.

So it's a joyous occasion when the band is on its game, as in the soaring, Pete Townshend-like Falling Down, which Noel sings himself, as he did with the more mature songs from the band's last outing, 2005's marvellous Don't Believe the Truth.

But strangely with Oasis, there's always great pleasure even when they miss the mark. It's the fun in trying (and failing) to comprehend their production choices on the simplest level, why they inexplicably made what initially feels like this misstep or that, while still creating songs that only improve with each listen. That's the nature of being an Oasis supporter.