In this still taken from the new documentary, As It Was, Liam Gallagher plays his vintage Gibson L-48 in the studio. He usually keeps a capo at the 4th fret to suit his vocal range.
Liam Gallagher is prowling the rainy streets of Seattle, his mood almost disarmingly upbeat. Given that he's opening for the Who on their highly touted “Moving On!" tour, his enthusiasm is more than understandable—it's downright infectious. “It's amazing, man," he gushes. “I used to listen to them growing up. They're one of the first bands I got into, obviously, with the Stones, the Kinks, the Beatles—all that stuff. We've had a couple of little chats in the corridor, but their knowledge on music would blow my mind. I'm not getting into anything with them on that shit, do you know what I mean? No, they're proper musicians, they're beautifully British, and I love it."
Love in all its splendor has guided Gallagher to where he finds himself today. Now 47, at heart he's still the same scrappy rock-and-roller from blue-collar Manchester, but he's also an introspective, Zen-like family man—a pretty far cry from the brash, arrogant, hard-partying waif who once fronted the Brit-rock juggernaut Oasis. Together with his older brother Noel, they dominated the turn of the 21st century with brain-searing lyrics and molten guitar riffs, from the now-classic “Wonderwall" to their final barn-burner “Falling Down," before they literally smashed the band to pieces in an epic backstage row at the 2009 Rock en Seine festival in Paris. When the dust had settled, two prized guitars were in splinters—Liam's Gibson J-200, a gift from his wife at the time, along with Noel's Gibson ES-355—and two battered and bruised egos were itching to go their separate ways.
Now two solo albums deep and building on an impressive comeback that started in 2015, Liam Gallagher has moved beyond the infamous falling out, turning out some of the most incisive songs of his career, with producers Greg Kurstin and Andrew Wyatt giving Gallagher's bareknuckle riffs a classic-rock sheen on his latest album, Why Me? Why Not.
But as chronicled in the just-released documentary As It Was, the road back for Liam hasn't been easy.
To this day, he has spoken little, if at all, to his brother, although the two trade barbs regularly in the press, while the din grows louder for an Oasis reunion. Beady Eye, the band Liam built from the ashes of Oasis, lasted two albums before cancelling their 2014 Coachella appearance; Gallagher later announced their breakup on his Twitter feed without ceremony. He spent the following year on a bit of a wander, licking his wounds but still writing lyrics and strumming his guitar “when his guard was down," as his then-girlfriend, manager, and now fiancée Debbie Gwyther describes it, until one day he made a fateful visit to a pub called JJ Finan's, in Ireland's County Mayo.
“Someone had a guitar, and then the band come in and started playing," he recalls. “I was at the bar having a drink—well, you know what it's like after you've had a couple of pints. You feel like Eric Clapton, don't you? So I just grabbed a guitar, and that was the end of that. I don't look back at it, because I'm too embarrassed, but it is what it is. I just thought, 'I'll give it a twirl and see what people think.'"
Gallagher knocked out a verse and chorus from a song he'd just penned called “Bold," and a cell-phone video of the pub jam went viral. Before long, Phil Christie from Warner Brothers U.K. came calling, and Gallagher had himself a solo deal. The ensuing album As You Were, a collaboration with producers Dan Grech-Marguerat, Kurstin, and Wyatt, debuted at No. 1 on the British charts in 2017. In advance of the album's release, Gallagher came home to Manchester—the city was still reeling after the May 22, 2017, bombing outside Ariana Grande's Manchester Arena concert—and performed an exultant set for a hungry crowd that seemed desperate to pour out its emotions.
“It's always hard work," he says, “going back to your hometown and doing a gig with a new album. But with the stuff that had gone down, it was super heavy, do you know what I mean? In times of need, music is the one, man. We just wanted to show respect and put on a good gig for them—as much as you can."
Two years later, Gallagher is reaping the fruit of his labors with yet another album that brings mega-producers Kurstin and Wyatt, both impressive multi-instrumentalists and string-pullers themselves, back into the fold. Why Me? Why Not. picks up where As You Were left off, but with an even heavier guitar presence, aided and abetted by Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner and session ace Mike Moore (who, along with former Kasabian and Beady Eye axe-slinger Jay Mehler, plays in Gallagher's current touring band). Pivoting on gems like the Bowie-esque ballad “Once," the hard-chugging “Shockwave," the pop-kissed “Now That I've Found You," and the mud-thick anthem “The River," it's meat-and-potatoes British rock with multiple nods to the Jam, the Faces, T. Rex, Pink Floyd, and yes, the Beatles. (An entire string section, recorded at Abbey Road's legendary Studio 2, appears on several songs, including the sublime album closer “Gone," produced by Wyatt.) Straight up, this is Liam Gallagher in full throat, open and honest, with a swagger that harks back to his best moments with Oasis.
Liam Gallagher's second solo album, Why Me? Why Not., debuted at No. 1 on the U.K. Albums Chart. The album's lead single, “Shockwave," is currently the best-selling vinyl single of 2019 in the United Kingdom.
But he's also quick to stress that the album was a team effort. “Obviously, I'm collaborating with Andrew and Greg again, so they had a few ideas, and it was very much the same as last time, do you know what I mean? It was like look, let's make another album, but with the songs just a bit better. That's what you always try to go into the studio and do, is write better songs."
“For me though, the genre of music will always be the same," he continues, and here he seizes the opportunity to throw some shade in his brother's direction. “I'm never gonna go off-roading and write some fucking pop album. But it's always going to have some sort of vibe going on. It's always going to remind you of something classic—like a Lennon vibe or something classic-sounding, because I think that's what the people want to hear from me. Unlike my brother, I'm not writing music just for me. I'm not selfish like that. I don't want people to come wanking and stand there and just fucking not get it. I want them to jump around and have a good time."
Gallagher's approach to songwriting is about as loose as it gets, but he does have a method. Keen eyes will notice he touts several different Gibson acoustics in As It Was, including a Hummingbird, a vintage L-48, and a well-worn B-25. (For plugging in, he owns up to a vintage Gretsch Country Gentleman, in deference to George Harrison.) He usually keeps a capo at the 4th fret because it suits the range of his voice, particularly in Ab.
“Mainly the ideas come at home, when I'm sitting about playing the guitar," he says. “I could never sit down and write about anything specific, because it would just turn out shit. So I just mess about on the verses, and then I turn me mind off, and a melody comes. I always have a few different melodies to choose from, and then I write down the first line, and then that opens it up, and before you know it, you've got a little story going on. But it's the first line I always find the hardest."
In the studio, the collaborative approach with Kurstin and Wyatt was crucial to shaping a song's sound and structure. “They know exactly what I'm about," Gallagher says, citing as an example the hard work and patience that went into giving “Meadow" the feel of a churchy, hypnotic classic. “I wanted it to sound a bit like the Faces, and it started off like that, but then it ended up sounding like Bon Jovi, so we scrapped that. Then Greg got on the Mellotron or the Wurlitzer, or one of them fucking things, and it turned out with a bit more of a 'Blue Jay Way' [Beatles] vibe, so that was a happy accident. I'm always one for trying things, because I think you get beautifully surprised sometimes." As if to accentuate the point, Kurstin takes a brilliant Harrison-like guitar solo midway through the song, setting the mood for a trippy organ coda laden with wondrous sheets of Echoplex.
Guitars
Gibson Hummingbird
Gibson L-48
Gibson B-25
Gretsch Country Gentleman
Accessories
Rhythm Tech Tambourine
Latin Percussion Rawhide Maracas
Wyatt in particular gives “The River," the album's second single, a dreamlike orchestral sheen, with layers of guitar and bass, that reflects his best work with Miike Snow. The song even seems to elevate into the stratosphere on the wings of the guitars by Moore and Zinner, with Zinner laying into a wispy, psychedelic solo that sounds like a page straight out of his preference for a vintage Strat, whipped up by a phalanx of Line 6 and Eventide delays as it sidewinds its way out of a cranked-up Vox AC30.
For all the rock-star bombast and bluster that underpins most of Why Me? Why Not., Gallagher still allows himself the humility to marvel at the sheer level of talent he's assembled. On tour, with Mehler and Moore on guitars, Christian Madden on keyboards, Drew McConnell on bass, and Dan McDougall on drums, he has an A-list band behind him with nearly five years together as a unit. “They're good lads," he says with admiration. “They just come out and they kill, man. So I'm quite happy being a singer, do you know what I mean? I played guitar a little bit on the last album, just to get the feel and that, but I'm sort of limited. I'd rather get in the ring with that kind of raw guitar as a singer, because I think it suits my voice. Not many singers can give it back when you've got guitars that raw."
With that sentiment, he laments the state of rock music today, and reasserts his love of the classics. “The Beatles and the Stones were the first bands I got into," he says, “but I mean, I got into the Stone Roses, too. And obviously you listen to your favorites, and you read their interviews, and they say, 'Oh this is what we got into,' the Pistols, the Clash, Jimi Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel. And you go out and buy the records, and before you know it, the first couple of bands, they shape your record collection, because you want to hear more like that, and you think, 'Oh I hear a bit of this. I hear Jimi Hendrix, or John Squire's guitar playing,' do you know what I mean?"
Of course, there's another band out there that still exerts its own sphere of influence, even if its founding members can never reconcile their differences. For his part, Liam Gallagher insists that Oasis is still a going concern, and if his remarks to Radio X's Chris Moyles in 2017 are any indication, he still holds out hope that there's a chance for a reunion down the road.
“I mean, I'm proud of Oasis. I'm still proud of it, do you know what I mean? It was like, we did what we meant to do. Obviously, we don't do it as much, but Oasis is still alive, without a fucking doubt. It's not been put out yet. Someone's tried to put it out many times, but at any given point, if you threw something on it, it would fucking go up again. Those songs will never die."
For the U.K. reboot of MTV's Unplugged series, Gallagher delivered a lively set at Hull City Hall. Jay Mehler leads the way with a Lowden O-23 acoustic.
This impromptu acoustic jam in 2015 at JJ Finan's Pub in Ireland launched Liam Gallagher's return to the solo spotlight.
Effects Bakery MECHA-PAN BAKERY Series MECHA-BAGEL OVERDRIVE
Konnichiwa, guitar lovers! 🎸✨
Are you ready to add some sweetness to your pedalboard? Let’s dive into the adorable world of the Effects Bakery Mecha-Pan Overdrive, part of the super kawaii Mecha-Pan Bakery Series!
🍩 Sweet Treats for Your Ears! 🍩
The Mecha-Pan Overdrive is like a delicious bagel for your guitar tone, but it’s been upgraded to a new level of cuteness and functionality!
Effects Bakery has taken their popular Bagel OverDrive and given it a magical makeover. Imagine your favorite overdrive sound but with more elegance and warmth – it’s like hugging a fluffy cat while playing your guitar!
It would have been easy for Wampler to simply make a Mostortion clone and call it a day, but they added some unique twists to the Mofetta pedal. While the original Mostortion had a MOSFET-based op amp, it actually used clipping diodes to create its overdrive. The Mofetta is a fairly accurate replica and includes that circuitry, but also has a toggle switch for texture, which lets you choose between the original-style diode-based clipping in the down position and multi-cascaded MOSFET gain stages in the up position.
Luscious Low Gain and Meaty Mid-Gain
The Mofetta’s control panel is very straightforward and conventional with knobs for bass, mids, treble, level, and gain. The original Mostortion was revered for its low-gain tone and is now popular among Nashville session guitarists. Wampler’s tribute captures that edge-of-breakup vibe perfectly. I enjoyed using the pedal with the gain on the lower side, around 9 o’clock, where I heard and felt slight compression that gave single notes a smooth and silky feel. I particularly enjoyed the tone-thickening the Mofetta lent to my Ernie Ball Music Man Axis Sport’s split-coil sound as I played pop melodies and rootsy, triadic rhythm guitar figures. The Mofetta has expansive headroom, and as a result there’s a lot of space in which you can find really bold, cutting tones without muddying the waters too much. Even turning the gain all the way off yields a pleasing volume bump that would work well in a clean boost setting.
There’s a lot of space in which you can find really bold, cutting tones without muddying the waters too much.
Switching the texture switch up engages the MOSFET section, introducing cascading gain stages that elevate the heat and add flavor the original Mostortion didn’t really offer. Classic rock and early metal are readily available via the MOSFET setting. If you need to stretch out to modern metal sounds, the Mofetta probably isn’t the pedal for you. Again, the original Mostortion was, first and foremost, a low-to-mid-gain affair, so unless you’re using it as a boost with a high-gain amp, the Mofetta is not really a vehicle for extreme sounds.
One of the Mofetta’s real treats is its responsiveness. Even at higher gain settings the Mofetta is very touch sensitive. You can tap into a wide range of dynamic shading just by varying the strength of your pick attack. I enjoyed playing fast, ascending scalar passages, picking with a medium attack then really slamming it hard when I hit a high climactic note, to get the guitar to really scream.
The Verdict
Wampler is a reliably great builder who creates pedals with a purpose. I own two of his pedals, the Dual Fusion and the Pinnacle, and both are really exceptional units. The Mofetta captures the essence of the Mostortion and makes it available at an accessible price. But even if you’ve never heard or played an original Mostortion, you’ll appreciate the truly versatile EQ, touch sensitivity, and the bonus texture switch, which expands the Mofetta’s range into more aggressive spaces. The wealth of dirt boxes on the market today can make a player jaded. But Wampler pushed into a relatively unique, satisfying, and interesting place with the Mofetta.
Filthy, saturated fuzz is a glorious thing, whether it’s the writ-large solos of Big Brother and the Holding Company’s live “Ball and Chain,” the soaring feedback and pure crush of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady,” or the sandblasted rhythm textures of Queens of the Stone Age’s “Paper Machete.” It’s also a Wayback Machine. Step on a fuzz pedal and your tone is transported to the ’60s or early ’70s, which, when it comes to classic guitar sounds, is not a bad place to be.
Catalinbread’s StarCrash is from their new ’70s collection, so the company is laying its Six Million Dollar Man trading cards on the table—upping the ante on traditional fuzz with more controls and, according to the company’s website, a little more volume than the average fuzz pedal, while still staying in the traditional Fuzz Face lane.
The Howler’s Viscera
Arbiter Electronics made the first Fuzz Face in 1966. The StarCrash is inspired by that 2-transistor pedal, but benefits from evolution, as did almost all fuzz pedals in the ’70s, when the standard shifted from germanium to silicon circuitry to improve the consistency of the effect’s performance. The downside is that germanium is gnarlier to some ears, and silicon transistors don’t respond as well to adjustments made via a guitar’s volume control.
While Fuzz Faces have only two knobs, volume and fuzz, the silicon StarCrash has three: volume, bias, and low-cut. Catalinbread’s website explains: “We got rid of that goofy fuzz knob. We know that 95 percent of all players run it dimed, and the remaining 5 percent use their guitar’s volume knob to rein it in.”
I suspect there are plenty of players who, like me, do adjust the fuzz control on their pedals, but the most important thing is that the core fuzz sound here is excellent—bristly and snarling, with a far girthier tone than my reissue Fuzz Face. It’s also, with the bias and low-cut controls, far more flexible. The low-cut control allows you to range from a traditional, comparatively thinner Fuzz Face sound (past noon and further) to the StarCrash’s authentic, beefier voice (noon and lower). Essentially, it cuts bass frequencies from 40 Hz to 500 Hz, resulting in an aural menu that runs from lush and lowdown to buzzy and slicing. And the bias control is a direct route to the spitty, fragmented, so-called Velcro-sound that’s become a staple of the stoner-rock/Jack White school of tone. The company calls this dial a “dying battery simulator,” and it starves the second transistor to achieve that effect.
Sweet Song of the Tribbles
Playing with the StarCrash is a lot of fun. I ran it through a pair of Carr amps in stereo, adding some delay and reverb to mood, and used a variety of single-coil- and humbucker-outfitted guitars. While both pickup types interacted well with the pedal, the humbuckers were most pleasing to my ears with the bias cranked to about 2 o’clock or higher, since the ’buckers higher output allowed me to let notes sustain longer before sputtering out. Keeping the low-cut filter at 9 o’clock or lower also helped sustain and depth in the Velcro-fuzz zone, while letting more of the instruments’ natural voices come through, of course.
With the low-cut filter turned up full and the bias at 10 o’clock, I got the StarCrash to be the perfect doppelganger of my Hendrix reissue Fuzz Face. But that’s such a small part of the pedal’s overall tone profile. It was more fun to roll off just a bit of bass and set the bias knob to about 2 or 3 o’clock. Around these settings, the sound is huge and grinding, and yet barre chords hold their character while playing rhythm, and single-note runs, especially on the low strings, are a filthy delight, with just the right schmear of buttery sustain plus a hint of decay lurking behind every note. It’s such a ripe tone—the sonic equivalent of a delicious, stinky cheese—that I could hang with it all day.
Regarding Catalinbread’s claims about the volume control? Yes, it gets very loud without losing the essence of the notes or chords you’re playing, or the character of the fuzz, which is a distinct advantage when you’re in a band and need to stand out. And it’s a tad louder than my Fuzz Face but doesn’t really bark up to the level of most Tone Bender or Buzzaround clones I’ve heard. In my experience, these germanium-chipped critters of similar vintage can practically slam you through the wall when their volume levels are cranked.
The Verdict
Catalinbread’s StarCrash—with its sturdy enclosure, smooth on/off switch and easy-to-manipulate dials—can compete with any Fuzz Face variant in both price and performance, scoring high points on the latter count. The bias and low-cut dials provide access to a wider-than-usual variety of fuzz tones, and are especially delightful for long, playful solos dappled with gristle, flutter, and sustain. Kudos to Catalinbread for making this pedal not just a reflection of the past, but an improvement on it.
Catalinbread Starcrash 70 Fuzz Pedal - Starcrash 70 Collection
The release of a newRed Panda pedal is something to be celebrated. Each of the company’s devices lets us crack into our signal chains and tweak its inner properties in unique, forward-thinking ways, encouraging us to be daring, create something new, and think about sound differently. In essence, they take us to the sonic frontier, where the most intrepid among us seek thrills.
Last January, I got my first glimpse of the Radius at NAMM and knew that Red Panda mastermind Curt Malouin had, once again, concocted something fresh. The pedal offers ring modulation and frequency shifting with pitch tracking and an LFO, and I heard classic ring-mod tones as the jumping off point for oodles of bold sounds generated by envelope and waveform-controlled modulation and interaction. I had to get my hands on one.
Enjoy the Process
I’ve heard some musicians talk about how the functionality of Red Panda’s pedals are deep to a point that they can be hard to follow. If that’s the case, it’s by design, simply because each Red Panda device opens access to an untrodden path. As such, it can feel heady to get into the details of the Radius, which blends between ring modulation and frequency shifting, offering control of the balance and shift ratios of the upper and lower sidebands to create effects including phasing, tremolo, and far less-natural sounds.
As complex as that all might seem, Red Panda’s pedals always make it easy to strip the controls down to their most essential form. The firmest ground for a guitarist to stand with the Radius is a simple ring-mod sound. To get that, I selected the ring mod function, turned off the modulation section by zeroing the rate and amount knobs, kept the shift switch off and the range switch on its lowest setting. With the mix at noon and the frequency knob cranked, I found my sound.
From there, by lowering the frequency range, the Radius will yield percussive tremolo tones, and the track knob helped me dial that in before opening up a host of phaser sounds below noon. By going the other direction and kicking the rate switch into its higher setting, a world of ring-mod tweaking opens up. There are some uniquely warped effects in these higher settings that include dial-up modem sounds and lo-fi dial tones. Exploring the ring mod/frequency shift knob widens the possibilities further to high-pitched, filtered white noise and glitchy digital artifacts at its extremes.
There are wild, active sounds within each knob movement on the Radius, and the modulation section naturally brings those to life in more ways than a simple knob tweak ever could, delivering four LFO waveforms, a step modulator, two x-mod waveforms, and an envelope follower. It’s within these settings that I found rayguns, sirens, Shepard tones, and futuristic sounds that were even harder to describe.
It’s easy to imagine the Radius at the forefront of sonic experiments, where it would be right at home. But this pedal could easily be a studio device when applied in low doses to give a track something special that pops. The possible applications go way beyond guitars.
The Verdict
The Radius isn’t easy to plug and play, but it’s also not hard to use if you keep an open mind. That’s necessary, too: The Radius is not for guitar players who prefer to stay grounded; this pedal is for sonic-stargazers and producers.
I enjoyed pairing the Radius with various guitar instruments—12-string, baritone, bass—and it kept getting me more and more excited about sonic experimentation. That feeling is a big part of what’s special about this pedal. It’s so open-ended and controllable, continuing to reveal more of its capabilities with use. Once you feel like you’ve gotten something down, there are often more sounds to explore, whether that’s putting a new instrument or pedal next to it or exploring the Radius’ stereo, MIDI, or expression-pedal functionality. Like many great instruments, it only takes a few minutes to get started, but it could keep you exploring for years.
Red Panda Radius Ring Modulator/Frequency Shifter Pedal
