After a pint or two of Guinness, you might even be able to convince yourself that his brother composed it. The Liam-written songs are largely a drag, just as they are on his studio albums, save for “Now That I’ve Found You,” a tiny post-Oasis diamond hiding among the weeds, presented in an even better version here as a melancholic acoustic guitar and piano ballad. The album, though, is whittled down to just 10 tracks-five by Oasis and five by Liam-and cagily scatters the Oasis songs throughout, the better to stoke the listener’s nostalgia (and ensuring that Oasis fans who aren’t Liam lifers never have to hear more than two unfamiliar songs in a row). As televised, the MTV Unplugged concert, recorded in August 2019 and aired the following month, was much more heavily tilted toward Liam’s own songs, including a chunk of five solo cuts that opened the concert. Of course, that stretch, like the entire tracklist, is the result of a bit of sequencing trickery. One of those is a remarkable three-song run of Oasis tunes, beginning with Be Here Now’s “Stand by Me” and ending with (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?’s “Cast No Shadow.” Sandwiched in the middle is an ultra-rare performance of Definitely Maybe non-album track “Sad Song” that is alone worth the price of admission. But MTV Unplugged is, at the very least, an indication that the irascible, charismatic frontman can still hold a crowd in the palm of his hand for long stretches. He even alludes to his walk-off while introducing “Once,” which he dedicates to former Oasis guitarist Bonehead-who joins Gallagher for the performance-for being the only member of the band to play a second Unplugged session. Liam knows that he can never correct for going AWOL in 1996. Nearly 25 years later, Liam Gallagher gets his second chance, which begs the question, why is the semi-mothballed MTV Unplugged trotting out the Gallagher who spurned them instead of the one who used the gig to prove his own worthiness as a frontman in his own right?
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