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Will an Oasis reunion be a success? Definitely. Will it be worth it? Maybe | Alexis Petridis

Their first two albums and B-sides were fantastic, but after that things got bloated and weary. The reunion could go either way and that’s what makes it exciting

I’m neither a diehard fan: the kind of Weller-haired, Wallabee-shod “parka monkey”, as Noel Gallagher put it, for whom it’s an article of faith that they were the greatest band of their era and that British rock music has never seen anything remotely as exciting since. Nearly 30 years later, it sounds like the 90s equivalent of the rash of celebratory, elegiac songs that documented the waning of the glam rock era – Mott The Hoople’s Saturday Gigs, T Rex’s Teenage Dream, Slade’s How Does It Feel – which seems pretty exalted company to keep. Sometimes they were great, even unexpectedly so – well after their recorded output had gone off the boil, they played the Shepherd’s Bush Empire to celebrate their 10th anniversary, and sounded incredible, pugnacious and snarling, as if stung by the criticism that had begun to rain down on them and determined to prove they could still summon up the requisite belligerence.

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