The next Oasis album is already written

You know, the announcement by Noel Gallagher that he's pretty much written the next Oasis album is being reported like it's some sort of a surprise; as if knocking out a few tunes to throw to the Oasis audience is a process akin to developing a cure for a hitherto unknown disease rather than listening to an old record and trying to have a go at knocking it off.

Noel told XFM:

"I wrote and demoed a full album while we were in the studio. While we were mixing the album in the studio we had another studio that consisted of a cupboard and this little garage band thing in the corner. We bought a miniature kids drum kit and wrote another record."

Gallagher added the new songs he's written are sounding "sickeningly good".

"The new stuff is a proper concept. Have you heard Neil Young's 'Greendale'? I say it with a smile on my face because as I'm saying it, I'm thinking 'you pretentious cunt'. It's all songs about characters and all the songs will have titles and in brackets it'll be 'AKA The Shopkeeper'.

Yes... that sounds fascinating, that does, and I'm just going to think about that for a moment, and not let my mind wander. There's nothing poor man's Damon Albarn about that, is there? Albarn did the Gorillaz... Gorillaz... no, man, concentrate: it's not like it's taken Noel about a decade to catch up to with ideas that Blur burned through last century and weren't actually much cop when they tried it, is it? Characters, I ask you, like it was ER or something... ER... Chicago... mykindatown, that is... do you get lemurs in Chicago? do you?