David Holmes at the desk, third UK No. 1
In November 2017 Sour Mash released Who Built the Moon?, the third Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds album, produced with David Holmes after years of Belfast and London sessions. Tracking stretched from 2013 to 2017 at Drama Studios in Belfast and at Hoxa HQ, The Pool and Strangeways in London. Emre Ramazanoglu mixed and engineered much of the finished set. Unlike the Sardy debut, Gallagher wrote in the studio with Holmes, chasing samples, French spoken-word fragments, and glam-psych arrangements instead of another set of mid-tempo ballads.
Fort Knox opens almost without a lead vocal, all loop and lift. Holy Mountain, the lead single, stacks a joyous wall of sound with Paul Weller on organ; Julian House’s video shot on old Top of the Pops cameras. It’s a Beautiful World leans into electronics and atmosphere. She Taught Me How to Fly and If Love Is the Law (Johnny Marr on guitar and harmonica) keep melody upfront while the production stays denser than Chasing Yesterday. Black & White Sunshine, the short Interlude, and The Man Who Built the Moon close a program that treats High Flying Birds as a studio band, not a solo singer with hired guns.
Timing mattered. Liam’s As You Were had hit UK No.1 weeks earlier; Noel’s album followed at No.1 with about 78,000 chart units, roughly three-quarters physical, including a strong vinyl share. He called the top of the charts the place he lived. Guests and Holmes’s soundtrack ear made the record noisier than the 2011 debut without abandoning chorus craft.
I’ll see you at the top of the charts — this is where I fucking live.
(Noel Gallagher to Official Charts, on Who Built the Moon? at UK No.1)
B-sides around the singles mattered too. Dead in the Water, issued with Holy Mountain, became a live staple beyond the album tracklist. The project completed a hat-trick of High Flying Birds UK No.1 studio albums after the self-titled debut and Chasing Yesterday. For Oasis watchers it was also a rare sibling double: both Gallaghers topping the album chart in the same season as solo acts.
Who Built the Moon? is the Noel record that risks sounding like a different band and still charts like the old one. Holmes pulls him toward psych and sample collage; Gallagher answers with hooks that survive the denser mix. It remains the clearest proof that High Flying Birds could mutate without losing the Sour Mash No.1 habit.
