ALBUM REVIEWS
Pacino and DeNiro, Nicki and Beyoncé… Tinchy Stryder and the Chuckle Brothers? Look, the point is that pop culture is packed with long-awaited team-ups, clashes of titans that sometimes soar with ineffable magic and sometimes crash-land on the same cultural scrapheap as Metallica and Lou Reed’s ‘Lulu’. Just because someone’s great in their own right, it doesn’t necessarily mean their talents will mesh with those of another creative giant.
Liam Gallagher and John Squire, though, have spent decades courting one another like One Day’s Emma and Dexter. Liam’s never been shy about his adoration of The Stone Roses – in fact, Oasis’ mission was essentially to finish what the earlier Manchester band, with one classic album and an underwhelming follow-up to their name, started in the late ‘80s. When the Gallaghers invited former Roses guitarist Squire to perform ‘Champagne Supernova’ at their epochal Knebworth show in 1996, they were all but getting on their hands and knees to declare: “We are not worthy.”
Yet it’s taken some 30 years for ‘Liam Gallagher John Squire’, which is more imaginative than its title might suggest, to come to fruition. Although he’s been more focused on creating visual art in recent years, the guitarist’s genius remains undimmed, as he adorns these bluesy arrangements with slow-burning grooves and wailing licks that ache with his life-long love of Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page. This is psychedelic, on occasion even transcendent music brought down to earth by Liam’s gravelly sneer, an intoxicating mix that often comes good on the singer’s promise that they’ve combined “the best bits of Oasis with the best bits of the Stone Roses”. You think: why didn’t they do this before?
The duo have collaborated once previously – on 1997’s ‘Love Me and Leave Me’, a keening track released by Squire’s short-lived post-Roses band The Seahorses – but this new project didn’t come to life until Gallagher returned to Knebworth as a solo star (he scoffs at the word ‘artist’) in 2022. Just to ram home how successful his comeback has been, and the extent to which it’s placed him back in the midst of former glories, Liam had the guitarist perform ‘Champagne Supernova’ again. During rehearsals, Squire revealed he’d written a couple of new tunes: would Liam like to sing on them? The answer was – presumably swearily – in the affirmative, and the project spiralled from there.
If they haven’t exactly walked their tasselled moccasins into a bold new direction, the result is a thoroughly modern record that meshes Squire’s gritty guitar work, which revels in imperfection, with the studio sheen of Liam’s solo albums. As their courtship blossomed, the musicians exchanged photos and video clips for a moodboard that set the tone of the album: Liam sent Bob Marley and the Pistols; Squire sent Hendrix, the Faces and the Humble Pie track ‘30 Days in the Hole’. The resulting 10 Squire-penned tunes were demoed in the guitarist’s home near Macclesfield, before they decamped to LA to record them with uber-producer Greg Kurstin, who helmed Liam’s three solo albums.
Squire, the auteur, was nervous about such a move – but it’s proved a canny one. What could have been a spit-and-sawdust psych-blues record is instead augmented with a glam crunch (the woozily assured ‘I’m A Wheel’); warm, rolling keys (joyous second single ‘Mars to Liverpool’); and buzzing electronic accoutrements (self-explanatory opener ‘Raise Your Hands’). The Roses-meets-Oasis promise heaves most gloriously into view on ‘Love You Forever’, as Liam’s loved-up delivery gives way to a thrillingly indulgent guitar breakdown. By the time Squire’s lashes of guitar weave around stabs of boogie-woogie piano on ‘You’re Not the Only One’, you’ll be digging out your tie-dye.
Sonically, the tracks are admittedly of a piece, though that’s sort of the point. Squire, who’s previously withheld his musical output like Scrooge McDuck hoarding riches in his bank vault, teems with ideas, overlapping gorgeous melodies with howling solos. Having overcome a near-catastrophic hand injury and the collapse of the Roses comeback, the guitarist sounds absolutely invigorated – and uses that inspiration to paint on one large canvas, rather than craft individual portraits. His lyrics are perhaps more questionable, but Liam isn’t exactly inexperienced at transforming even the most pedestrian rhymes into terrace-ready chants. “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” Obi-Wan Gallagher shrugs on ‘I’m A Wheel’. No-one else could get away with it.
If fans were vaguely alarmed by lead single ‘Just Another Rainbow’, which pulses with a reassuringly Roses-style riff but also sees Liam recite the colours of the rainbow and ponder, “am I your windmill?”, it’s hard to imagine anyone feeling short-changed by the album itself. Obviously this isn’t a ‘Definitely Maybe’ or ‘The Stone Roses’ – no-one could touch those hook-laden masterpieces. As a triumph of style and mood, though, ‘Liam Gallagher John Squire’ is well worthy of their enduring legacies.
Bruce Springsteen was right. At the risk of simplifying the value of this impressive box set, giving away the main storyline of his new biopic, and flattening decades of mythmaking, the reality is just what Springsteen always claimed. Even when he tried the material with his closest collaborators, using some of the strongest songs he had ever written, the most powerful version of Nebraska is still the one he recorded at home in Colts Neck in January 1982. Just a lonely man in his early thirties with an acoustic guitar, a TASCAM PortaStudio, and an Echoplex, capturing solo demos for what he thought would be a full-band project. Everything that came after was an experiment.
But what an experiment it turned out to be. For those who don’t know the story, here it is in brief. After the success of his upbeat 1980 single “Hungry Heart” and a long streak of relentless touring and critical praise, Springsteen entered one of the most creatively intense chapters of his life. He began by writing the grim ballads and shadowy lullabies of Nebraska, which he then tried to recreate with the E Street Band and in solo studio sessions before ultimately choosing to release the home demos. He did no press and no tour, which left him free to keep writing, and that work became 1984’s massive commercial hit Born in the U.S.A. During that time, he tossed aside enough songs to fill multiple albums, later shared through collections like Tracks and Tracks II: The Lost Albums. He also found time to help revive the career of early rock’n’roll icon Gary U.S. Bonds, co-writing and co-producing two comeback records, contributing a Grammy-winning song to Donna Summer, and hitting the gym with enthusiasm.
It might sound like a golden moment, but for Bruce, it felt like a creative cage—the kind of brooding, restless chapter that inspires a filmmaker to cast Jeremy Allen White to play you on screen. The twist is that the most crucial moments, from the original Nebraska to the electric and explosive version of “Born in the U.S.A.,” happened quickly and naturally, before anyone could complicate the process. Unlike anything else in his official catalog, Nebraska 82: Expanded Edition offers a clear window into that moment. Within this tight collection is a sharper, more complete image of one of Springsteen’s most legendary and personal records—still the one he treasures most—along with rare insight into his creative rhythm.
The set includes a newly remastered version of the album, a disc of solo acoustic outtakes carrying the same raw emotion, the legendary Electric Nebraska sessions, and a live album and film capturing Springsteen performing the record start to finish in an empty New Jersey theater earlier this year. The live material feels reverent, with beautiful support from former Bob Dylan bandmate Larry Campbell. The remaster reveals that, despite the album’s association with the birth of lo-fi, the sound is richer and more intentional than much of what followed. Listen to the last half minute of “Atlantic City” through headphones and focus on how the acoustic guitars, mandolin, and background vocals fade away layer by layer. It’s a reminder of how much careful craft went into creating such stark beauty.
Unlike his earlier box sets for Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River, this one isn’t about showcasing how many different paths he could have taken. It’s about sharpening the vision. Where Nebraska is known for its unbroken mood, Electric Nebraska jerks between heartland laments and roaring rock songs across its eight tracks. These takes feel like rough sketches more than finished recordings—mostly Springsteen on electric guitar and vocals, Max Weinberg on drums, and Garry Tallant on bass—hinting at an album that could have been more accessible and mainstream in 1982. And yet, this raw version of “Downbound Train,” with its clanging rhythms and unsettling bridge, may be one of the strangest things he ever put to tape.
It’s easy to see why Springsteen thought these sessions didn’t work. Versions of “Open All Night” and “Johnny 99,” which on the original album burn with desperate energy, sound here like something a bar band could fall into with a casual count-in and some good-natured rockabilly riffs. On one hand, it highlights how his delivery gives shape and gravity to his songwriting. (Compare the early acoustic “Thunder Road” to its triumphant album version for proof.) On the other hand, slipping into different musical skins was a key part of his process then. He could turn something as playful as “Pink Cadillac” into a moaning, shadowy reflection of itself, as if the character had returned to earth wrecked and hollow, fixated on one thought.
For devoted fans, these shifts are what make the box set essential: witnessing how songs like “Working on a Highway” transformed from a chilling ballad called “Child Bride” into a loud, laughing, raucous number. Some of the outtakes, like the quietly devastating country song “Losin’ Kind,” have been passed around unofficially for years. But this set also reveals two entirely unheard songs: “On the Prowl” and “Gun in Every Home.” In the first, he ends with a dizzying repetition of “searching,” drenched in slapback echo that mimics the sound of a live band. In the second, he paints a nightmarish portrait of suburban life and ends with a bare, defeated admission: “I don’t know what to do.”
Within a single song, Springsteen might take the role of a killer hiding in the dark or a runaway on the move, either escaping or facing the question of whether being caught is actually a strange kind of salvation. That’s the point of sitting in the dark: you can’t see the exit. Yet sometimes he caught brief glimpses of where it all might lead. Along with the original demo tape, Springsteen sent a letter to his manager, Jon Landau. He went through each track, detailing the grim subject matter, floating arrangement ideas, and occasionally letting a sliver of optimism shine through.
He scribbled a note next to “Born in the U.S.A.,” which appears here in two early forms: a heavy acoustic blues and a full-band rocker stripped of its later synths, leaving no doubt about how the narrator feels. “Might have potential,” he wrote. That small spark of belief carried him through. He knew these songs would take work, and that truly understanding them would take time. But he also trusted that at the end of each hard-earned day, there would still be magic in the night.
