Noel Gallagher “couldn’t really sing songs about love” in Oasis.

The band’s former guitarist couldn’t let his true feeling show being in a “macho” rock band, but promises his new project, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, will have a number of more tender moments, which he has been stockpiling since he was in the group – which broke up in 2009.

He told The Sun newspaper: “Oasis were a very macho rock band and you couldn’t really sing songs about love. But I never shied away from writing those songs – they were just piling up. For ‘If I Had a Gun’, I’d like the listener to think about the person they love the most. It could be your mum, girlfriend or wife.

“This album has a more human sound, whereas Oasis was about the primal energy. It was in-your-face, like a football match set to music. But this, I would really like people to stop and listen.”

Noel also thinks the first two Oasis albums were the best, as he wrote all the tracks on them, rather than in the group’s later history when his brother, singer Liam, bassist Andy Bell and guitarist Gem Archer all contributed tracks.

He added: “In a band with different writers and styles, the album will always be disjointed and never as coherent as ‘(What’s the Story) Morning Glory’ where you can tell the same person has written all the songs.”

Oasis split after a huge fight between Liam and Noel in Paris, and while Noel has been working on his High Flying Birds project, Liam and the other former members of Oasis have formed Beady Eye.