Oasis’ debut album Definitely Maybe celebrates its 30th anniversary this August. The fastest-ever selling debut in the UK on release, this seminal album marked the point when Oasis became a cultural phenomenon.

Including the classic singles ‘Supersonic’, ‘Live Forever’ and ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’, its songs sound as fresh and relevant as they did in 1994. Having sold over 6.9 million copies globally, it also sits as the 2nd most streamed album of the 90’s (following Oasis’ (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? at #1).

The Limited-Edition Deluxe 2CD / Limited-Edition Deluxe 4LP includes 2014 remastered album plus the previously unreleased and discarded original recording session from Monnow Valley along with outtakes from Sawmills Studios plus a demo of Sad Song featuring Liam’s vocal - all recently mixed for this release by Noel Gallagher and Callum Marinho.

Side A:
A1. Rock ‘n’ Roll Star (Remastered) A2. Shakermaker (Remastered) A3. Live Forever (Remastered)

Side B:
B1. Up In The Sky (Remastered) B2. Columbia (Remastered) B3. Sad Song (Remastered)

Side C:
C1. Supersonic (Remastered) C2. Bring It On Down (Remastered) C3. Cigarettes & Alcohol (Remastered)

Side D:
D1. Digsy’s Dinner (Remastered) D2. Slide Away (Remastered) D3. Married With Children (Remastered)

Including brand new artwork by the original art designer Brian Cannon for Microdot and original sleeve photographer Michael Spencer Jones, plus new sleeve notes, this debut album was a veritable firecracker out of the blocks upon its release.

These days, it’s uncouth for a band to come out of the traps beating their chests about how brilliant they are. Back in 1994, however, Oasis’ braggadocio was refreshing, particularly after the pity-party of grunge. They were an irresistible force kicking lumps out of a seemingly-immovable object: walking the walk, but unafraid to talk the talk, too.

Noel Gallagher has (rightfully) copped a lot of flak for his lyrics over the years, but much of ‘Definitely Maybe’s enduring appeal is in the broad nonsense of the words: in the context of the music itself, all that rain/pain, sky/fly, Elsa/Alka Seltzer gibberish somehow sounds important, inviting the listener to project whatever they want onto the songs.

In truth, and sidestepping for a second, Oasis were never the same after they stopped working with Owen Morris, the producer who was responsible for the swagger and volume of their first three albums. And so the Gallagherian neologism “sheeeeeine” crops up on 11 separate occasions here on the blistering ‘Definitely Maybe’, its usages running the gamut from nouns to esoteric verbs, of course.

It eventually became Oasis’ go-to rhyme for any lyric that needed to end in ‘-ine’, but still, there’s still something impressive about the way Liam wrings every last conceivable sound from a one-syllable word, no?

And if Morris was responsible for shaping Oasis’ sonic palette, art director Brian Cannon and photographer Michael Spencer-Jones played a similar role in shaping their visual one. The Definitely Maybe cover itself has become iconic, but the singles were just as arresting, and were rife with little details and Easter eggs that gave you a sense of the band’s identity.

An album that still stands the test of time today, it is also known as being the only Oasis album to date to be sung entirely by Liam. By ‘Dig Out Your Soul’ in 2008, the brothers were almost co-vocalists, which negated the point of having the best British front man of his generation among their ranks. OK, sure, Noel’s voice is the better of the two nowadays, but he’s no match for Liam overall, in my humble opinion.

As for some of the stand out tracks (which is hard to discern, given how good the whole album truly is), ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’ was a brilliantly shameless piece of profligacy on the band’s part. ‘Slide Away’ never quite gets the kudos it deserves, in my opinion, and for a long time, Oasis didn’t even play it live. Though by their final tour it had become a mainstay of the set-list and rightly so: it’s one of Noel Gallagher’s greatest songs.

It’s strange that the pedestrian pseudo-anthem – think ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’, et al – became so associated with Oasis, because there’s not an instance of it on their debut album. Other than the daft ‘Married With Children’, Definitely Maybe is balls-to-the-wall rock ’n’ roll; and the sort of thing they were always promising ‘the next album’ would sound like (but never quite did).

Side E:
E1. Rock ‘n’ Roll Star (Monnow Valley Version) E2. Shakermaker (Monnow Valley Version) E3. Live Forever (Monnow Valley Version) E4. Up In The Sky (Monnow Valley Version)

Side F:
F1. Columbia (Monnow Valley Version) F2. Bring It On Down (Monnow Valley Version) F3. Cigarettes & Alcohol (Monnow Valley Version) F4. Digsy’s Dinner (Monnow Valley Version)

Side G:
G1. Rock ‘n’ Roll Star (Sawmills Outtake) G2. Up In The Sky (Sawmills Outtake) G3. Columbia (Sawmills Outtake) G4. Bring It On Down (Sawmills Outtake)

Side H:
H1. Cigarettes & Alcohol (Sawmills Outtake) H2. Digsy’s Dinner (Sawmills Outtake) H3. Slide Away (Sawmills Outtake) H4. Sad Song (Mauldeth Road West Demo, Nov’ 92)

The first set of demos on this glorious 4LP box-set, is taken from the band’s time in Monnow Valley and features eight tracks. Liam’s youthful sounding vocals shine through a fragile backdrop of watered down guitars that seems to miss any sort of anger or drive that the band where so well known for.

‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star,’ for example, paints the Gallagher brothers and band mates as anything but as, for my money, the tracks recorded within this session just feel empty, the drums lethargic, the guitar solos low ebbed, distant, dulled down, and weirdly it feels like Liam’s vocals are a little behind schedule (or so it sonically seems) sometimes.

That said, their early take of ‘Live Forever’ is absolutely sumptuous, softly melodic, and embraces its love song status more here than the finished version came to be.

‘Bring It On Down’ is also lacking here from its released version, but as much as it doesn’t punch you in the nuts like the final cut, it still manages to ebb nicely over you as it gets this latest airing.

The second set of outtakes are taken from the band’s sessions recorded at Sawmills Studios, Cornwall and feature seven tracks. And it is here on these tracks where we most definitely (no pun intended, maybe) get closer to their final album sound. Especially on the boombastic ‘Bring It On Down’ and one of my own personal favorites, the brilliant ‘It’s just Rock n Roll.’

Interestingly, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’ from this very same session provides a completely different take on the song, whilst proving its incompletion with missing verses, and yet also features Strokes-esque vocal effects on Liam’s outro line of the aforementioned ‘It’s just Rock n Roll’ (something the band really didn’t really go on to utilize).

Concluding this wondrous box-set is ‘Sad Song’ (Mauldeth Road West Demo, Nov’ 92), which features Noel Gallagher on vocals, surprisingly enough. A mixture of being uplifting, kind of melancholic, always gentle, the underlying message is pretty much positive and thus the track is very pleasing throughout.

Oasis - Definitely Maybe / Deluxe 30th Anniversary Editions Official Video