Noel Gallagher is back — but not as you know him! Gallagher returns the guise of Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds with self-produced record 'Chasing Yesterday!'

The new album - which contains first single "In The Heat Of The Moment" - follows the success of Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, which was a shock to nobody more than Noel Gallagher, and which set his life off on an unexpected, post-Oasis direction. "I wasn't ready for the positive reaction from the album and the solo gigs," he says. "At first I thought I'd just about tolerate being a centre-stage singer every night but I really enjoyed it, probably because neither I nor the audience had any expectations and just went with it. I was amazed that it got to an arena level so quick."

Just as Gallagher could only have written late 20th century hymns like "Rock 'n' Roll Star" and "Live Forever" as a young man on the cusp of a great adventure, so he could only have written 'Chasing Yesterday' now. There are anthems of the kind Gallagher does so well, but moments of quiet reflection too. The album is musically far-reaching and lyrically questioning without ever taking itself too seriously. It's a rock'n'roll classic that's big enough to handle a bit of space jazz.

"We used to take the piss out of space jazz in Oasis. When people told us we weren't adventurous we would say, 'what do you want, space jazz?' And now I've made a track that is real, actual, spaced-out jazz. And you know what? It's great," he says of "The Right Stuff," one of the 14 tracks on the new record.

With his former producer Dave Sardy otherwise occupied, Gallagher was in the position of having to oversee the album himself. It was a challenge that proved, though terrifying, ultimately rewarding. And with no producer to bend and shape him into any one direction, Noel Gallagher let the High Flying Birds take flight.

The result, Chasing Yesterday, is an album that is, if not exactly Noel Gallagher's Jazz Odyssey, then certainly his galactic ramble. For every Oasis-styled monster there's a free-flowing groover, for every moment of lyrical profundity there's a nugget of throwaway absurdity. It's the sound of Noel Gallagher finding his freedom.