It was a few songs into Oasis’s first concert in 16 years and — despite the heavy anticipation, the rabid fan attention, the relief of simply seeing the Gallagher brothers walk onstage together, Liam’s left arm draped over Noel’s shoulder — there was something still tentative in the air at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, on Friday night. A crowd of 62,000 fans was vibrating, and cheering and singing along, but still waiting for license to rage.
Liam, the band’s frontman and the punchier of the two brothers — Noel, the songwriter and guitarist, is far more dour — seemed to sense the dryness.
Turn around, he told the audience. Find someone and throw your arms around them. Hold them tight, he said. Then the band finally located its detonator.
That was “Cigarettes & Alcohol,” from its mighty, snarling 1994 debut album, “Definitely Maybe.” The guitars started at maximum sleaze, and Liam began singing the lyrics — about all the fun ways to tune out when life gets boring — with real brio. The crowd, especially down on the stadium floor, began ecstatically hopping in place in little rugby scrums, then erupted out of them as the band peaked at the chorus. Finally, everyone had shaken off their nerves.
For around two hours, Oasis — perhaps the most meaningful and popular British band of the 1990s, and certainly the rowdiest and most fun — toggled back and forth between masculinist ecstasy and a sometimes fumbling search for it in a frills-free and dogged performance. At times, it was pure triumph, the grandest pub singalong fathomable. At other moments, it was a ramble in the dark.
In total, it was a success if only for its improbability. The Gallaghers’ personal and professional brotherly hate verges on the Shakespearean — a legible public soap opera in a high tabloid era — and it has long seemed as if the two would never reconcile to share the stage again. Even when the group was at its mid- to late-90s peak, its stability was perilous, if amusingly so. Rarely has a modern musical act so effectively weaponized chaos in its favor, making Oasis as appealing for its mayhem as its songs, which were curiously well-structured and mature for a band of its bedlam.
What animated Oasis the most was that, as a songwriter, Noel was sentimental and a bit dreamy, and as a singer, Liam was sneering and a touch rude. Hearing Noel’s words in Liam’s voice — most Oasis songs are delivered this way — is like bring serenaded by a resentful punk. Onstage, Liam sings directly into the microphone, leaning in ever so slightly with menace. Noel, playing guitar, sometimes nimbly, can verge on the beatific.
The band’s hits have proven profoundly durable, which was especially clear during the closing three-song run of this 23-song set list, drawn heavily from its debut and its second album, the muscularly sweet “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” from 1995. First was “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” with its Lennon-esque flickers, which erupted midway through into a weepy vocal bloodletting before resolving to a tender conclusion, with Noel visibly reeling with feeling as much as he’ll allow. Next came the unerringly beautiful “Wonderwall,” the band’s most indelible hit; when Noel chimed in, his vocals felt like pleas up against his brother’s sermon. Last was the Beatles homage “Champagne Supernova,” the least convincing of the three closers, but it still left a psychedelic haze in its wake.
Most of the night’s most forceful playing was in the show’s second half — a baleful “Slide Away,” a riveting “Live Forever,” a take on “Whatever” that showed off the brothers’ wound-you/heal-you dynamic well. “Rock ’n’ Roll Star,” which concluded the main set, was a conflagration, stretched and bent into glorious shape.
The show’s first half was more tentative, especially the three-song run in which Noel sang lead: “Talk Tonight,” which was met with respectful applause, then “Half the World Away” and “Little by Little,” which riled up the faithful a touch. The show’s beginning — “Hello” leading into “Acquiesce” — felt like a statement of purpose about reconciliation.
Perhaps those lulls owed in part to the way Oasis in its prime seemed to flatly reject nostalgia: It was a living, breathing, rumbling thing, capturing the swell of a nation that met its cultural moment, sometimes with cheers, sometimes with fists. At the merchandise booths, the band was selling football kits and bucket hats, a nod to the generational style icons the brothers once were, particularly Liam, who never met a lightweight all-weather jacket he couldn’t peacock.
Before Oasis even took the stage, at least one fan was wheeled out on a stretcher, pumping his fist in the air. But only late in the show did true rowdiness set in. During “Rock ’n’ Roll Star,” one fan set off a flare off to the side of the floor, sending a roar of flames and then smoke up into the air. A few songs later, during “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” another flare, this one almost at the center of the stadium. The air afterward never lost its slight acridity.
Oasis burned hot and fast — it was a creature of the perpetual present up until it began living in the past. That’s how the 2000s went for the band, never recapturing the glories of its first albums. In 2009, the group split, seemingly for good. Both brothers went on to perform lesser music in lesser bands.
This reunion appears built for sturdiness. In addition to the Gallaghers, one original band member remains: the guitarist Paul Arthurs, known as Bonehead. Rounding out this iteration are Gem Archer on guitar and Andy Bell on bass — both veterans of the band’s 2000s run — and Joey Waronker on drums.
The brothers didn’t speak much, but they took a few moments to poke fun at themselves via poking fun at the crowd. Before “The Masterplan,” Noel thanked all the fans in their 20s who’d never seen them live before but kept their music relevant. Earlier, Liam asked, “Was it worth the £40,000 you paid for the ticket?” — a reference to a pricing scandal.
And just before the end of the show, Liam came as close to mushy as he appears capable of: “Nice one for putting up with us over the years.”
Up until this point, apart from the two brothers raising arms in a lightly comic victory gesture at the top of the night, it was unclear whether Noel and Liam had exchanged one word, or even a glance, during the whole show. They were magnets with matching polarities, holding steady at a reasonable distance. Throughout the night, Bonehead had stood between them, a silent enforcer of order, performing invisible choreography of good sense.
But with the show over, the seemingly unthinkable had been achieved. Liam took a deep bow, then tossed his tambourine into the crowd. He turned to leave the stage, and gave Noel the briefest of bro embraces. The crowd roared as loudly as it had for any of the hits, probably louder.
At the beginning of the encore, a black Range Rover had pulled up and parked backstage, its nose pointed at the exit. While Noel and the rest of the band were still soaking it all in, and feedback from the guitars was wanly lingering, Liam meandered offstage, hopped into the S.U.V.’s back seat, and was ferried out of the building.
Jon Caramanica is a pop music critic who hosts “Popcast,” The Times’s music podcast.
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