Liam and Noel Gallagher may be the only two original members of Oasis left in the band, but don’t think the unibrow brothers have changed anything. Well, Liam now looks like Prince Valiant, but on record it’s pretty much the same shtick. Not to spoil our upcoming review, but despite the hype, the new record offers no progression. In some ways, it’s regression. The Manchester dudes were originally (and famously [and stupidly]) dubbed "The Sex Beatles" for smashing up that gobbing, Nevermind the Bollocks attitude with blatant Lennon/McCartney rips. Now they’re content to just be The Worse Beatles. What happened to the Sex part? Well, Noel recently admitted his songwriting dipped in the late ’90s after he stopped using cocaine.

Look, I’m not condoning nose moguls just for the sake of good rock music. After all, the drugs have hardly kept Oasis tour opener Ryan Adams from remaining the most vanilla, ho-hum recording artist of the decade. But, the quality of Dig Out Your Soul on the whole hardly matters. What’s important is that with "The Turning," "The Shock of the Lightning," and "Falling Down" Oasis has three great new singles to slot into it’s Greatest Hits setlist. Tickets for the Allstate Arena show go on sale this Saturday.

New Year’s Eve bookings have already begun to roll in, and none are more exciting than Hum at the Double Door. Perhaps it was just the use of "Stars" in a Caddilac commercial, but the Champaign act has been coincidentally on my office playlist a lot lately. What strikes you upon listening to Hum’s two major-label albums—You’d Prefer an Astronaut and Downward Is Heavenward—is just how much the guitar has fallen out of favor in indie rock. The Illini gear-geeks worship the six-strings, throwing mountains of effects and solos on top of their heavy riffs. It’s also the loudest band I’ve ever seen. Yes, including My Bloody Valentine. The band played an incredible NYE show with the Flaming Lips in 2000 before sputtering out. A couple of reunion gigs went down over the last five years, but perhaps this bodes well for a full return. The state of our state’s rock scene needs the boost. Tickets go on sale this Saturday.