New albums: Noel Gallagher on form, a Joycean tribute by Hibsen and Dave Grohl’s stadium-sized grief

Thankfully, that cover does not appear on Council Skies, the fourth album from Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. Instead, the elder Gallagher has delivered his most consistently strong post-Oasis album and one that draws heavily from his childhood and early life.

While the album still has the occasional pub-band plodder, there’s plenty to remind us of what a force of nature Gallagher was when he had the world at their feet.

Easy Now is the sort of big-hearted singalong that Oasis delivered in their pomp, a mass-market, festival-friendly tune you’ll be humming along to by second listen. Dead to the World is a reflective slow-burner anchored by a crisp Wonderwall-type vocal, acoustic guitar and swirling string-laden arrangements, recorded at Abbey Road.

The title track — its name borrowed from a book by the artist Pete McKee — is a rollicking tour-de-force, although the sloganeering lyrics don’t stand up to scrutiny. The propulsive Love is a Rich Man also has wince-making lyrics, but the big, maximalist arrangements are enthralling. As ever with Noel, the influence of the Beatles looms large. While an Oasis reunion seems an impossibility in the year that Blur and Pulp are trucking again, Council Skies is arguably his best work in decades.

The death of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins last year was a hammer blow to the band and to his best friend Dave Grohl. There were major, star-studded concerts in his honour, including one at Wembley Stadium.

A new drummer is on board, but it’s Grohl himself who plays percussion on But Here We Are, their 11th studio album. It’s far from a new departure for him — after all, he pounded the skins for Nirvana.

But Here We Are is the sound of a band working through grief. Virtually every song is inspired by death — Grohl also lost his mother, Virginia, last year — and the fall-out for those left behind.

There’s nothing oblique about the lyrics. “It came in a flash, came from nowhere,” go the opening lines of Rescued on the shock of learning of Hawkins’ death. A 10-minute track, The Teacher, is about his mother, who was, indeed, a schoolteacher. It’s a moody, grungy meditation that’s both melancholic and defiant.

As ever with Foo Fighters, a bracing brand of rock is favoured and, despite the dark subject matter, many of the songs are stadium-sized. This is, after all, a group who headlined Slane Castle in 2015. There’s a commercial feel to the songs too — as there has been since day one — and Greg Kurstin pops up once more as producer. As someone who has worked with Lily Allen and Pink, it’s hardly surprising that he helps imbue a pop sensibility to proceedings.

Bloomsday is almost here, but for some, it’s Joyce’s Dubliners rather than Ulysses that captivates. The masterful collection of short stories certainly inspired roots and folk musicians Jim Murphy and Gráinne Hunt, who have joined forces for a new project, Hibsen. Their debut album, The Stern Task of Living, comprises a song for each of the 15 stories. The arrangements are thoughtful and, occasionally, lush and the lyrics come from the pen of people who have spent a lot of time in Joyce’s world.

The Dead is a standout in both Joyce’s collection and the album and Hunt sings beautifully, from Greta’s point of view as she pines over the long-ago death of her one true love. My own favourite story, A Painful Case, has inspired a fine song that muses on lost loves and choices not taken by a man, she sings, whose “many days of loneliness lined his face.”

Hibsen play Dubliners in full and in the same order that the stories appear in the book and album at Dublin’s Smock Alley theatre tonight.