There probably isn’t a human being between the ages of 20 and 50 who doesn’t know about Oasis’s lifelong obsession with the Beatles. So it may be no surprise to learn that Dig out Your Soul the group’s unexpectedly excellent new album contains the usual hatful of Fabs references: a descending Dear Prudence chord sequence ( The Turning); a sample of John Lennon in his final interview on a tender Liam tune called I’m Outta Time; a Ringo rhythm (the one from Rain) played by his son Zak on To Be Where There’s Life.

And yet, at the heart of that love affair lies an irresolvable paradox. By fearlessly changing with every album, the Beatles changed our perception of what it was to develop as a band. For their slavish devotion to the Fabs, Oasis bore closer comparison to the hippy scions Grateful Dead. Not in terms of their music, but because they came to symbolise a moment on the timeline of popular culture. Just as the Grateful Dead’s music became secondary to their continued existence, in the past ten years Oasis have acted as a gathering post for Britpop veterans who proudly continue to be here now.

All of which is a blessing and a curse for Noel Gallagher. How do you motivate yourself to create a great album without any burden of pressure to do so? If Dig out Your Soul, the group’s first since the cement-footed rock bombast of Don’t Believe the Truth in 2005, is anything to go by, the clue might be in the question. Having long since relieved himself of the need to deliver hits, Noel Gallagher sounds like a man gingerly dipping his toes into experimental waters – and enjoying the sensation. In Oasis’s case, a little adventure (after so many years of none) goes a long way: the hypnotically sluggish rhythm that pushes along Liam’s stoned vocoder vocal on (Get off Your) High Horse Lady; the demonic swamp rock of Waiting for the Rapture.

Apart for a brace of underwhelming compositions from Andy Bell, the bassist, and Gem Archer, the guitarist, it’s an album that maintains an irresistible atmospheric pull for sustained periods and that’s a palpable advance on anything the band have offered this decade. Certainly, they’ve written nothing that quite sounds like The Turning – a moody five-minute beauty that moves in a blur of motion and neon from a tentative electric piano.

Liam’s slow emergence as a songwriter continues here. Evidence that marriage and fatherhood have matured our last great unreconstructed rock star may not have been immediately apparent to anyone who read the recent interview in which Liam declaimed, “SpongeBob SquarePants is a mental, full-of-beans sponge. He’s mad for it.” But listen to him on the closing song, Soldier On, and a different Liam emerges. The reflective paean to perseverance oscillates soberly between a single titular mantra and bursts of keening melodica from Noel, until both dissipate – as if to leave room for closing credits and the unavoidable conclusion that Oasis have quietly gathered their civvies and freed themselves from the captivity of their past glories.

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