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Gallagher calls his Gibson ES-355 "the basis for everything." © Rune Hellestad/Corbis

When it came to guitars and gear, did you make certain choices to differentiate this album from Oasis records?

"Hmm…[long pause] Well, it is a new sound…but only from taking things away. I didn't invent anything. I just took elements…and the excesses of Oasis, like the extra guitars and the fucking…I just took 'em away. I didn't add anything; I just left the space. The new sound is me singing all the songs and there's one less guitarist.

"As far as amps and stuff, what did I use?... I used a Hiwatt Custom 100, a Blackface Fender '64 Deluxe, a 1980's Vox AC30… I'm not sure I've used any of these on Oasis records before… I can't remember!"

Let's talk about your songwriting. With a song like If I Had A Gun, how long do you slave away at it until you go, "OK, it's good enough to take to the studio"?

"That one pretty much came off the bat straight away. The rewriting of that was just a matter of dotting the i's and crossing the t's. I pretty much got that one first off. It was an easy one, I've got to say.

"Now, The Death Of You And Me, that one took a long time to write. There were months and months of going back to it, rewriting words and changing little one-liners as they came to me: 'Oh, fuck, that's it!' – you know? It was quite a journey for me, but because of that, it's the one I might be the proudest of. But with If I Had A Gun, it's instant when you hear it because it was instant when I wrote it."

What goes through your head, though, when one song comes quickly and the other is a struggle? Do you tend to think that one might be better for whatever reason?

"Two things can happen: With an easy one, you tend to think, Oh, it can't be that good – it was much too easy. There's no way it can be good. And then on the other side of that, with the song that you have to rewrite and go over, you have to really believe in it. I know I have to reassure myself that a song is good, because it's just too easy to give up and say, 'Fuck it. I'll just write something else.'

"I really stuck it out with The Death Of You And Me. But you have to trust your instincts, your gut reactions. 'Do I like it? Yes. Is it worth the time and effort? Yes.' You have to persevere.

"If I Had A Gun…I knew it was one of the best songs I've ever written. By that yardstick alone, I knew it was good, because I've written some pretty good songs. Every time I played it for myself, I kept getting the same feeling. I thought, Yes! This is going to be a good one. I just knew it. I instantly knew the arrangement, the words, everything. It was just there, and it was special."

Is it too early to talk about the next record, the one you recorded with Amorphous Androgynous?

"Yeah, we can talk about it. I can give you some facts, but I don't want to say too much because there won't be anything to talk about when it comes out. There's 13 tracks on it, three of which are the singles from this album. But they're vastly different versions – they've been remixed and psychedelic-cized.

"There's 10 original songs on it. It's not an electronic record; it's a psychedelic rock record. Ironically, as there's not a lot of guitars on the current record, there's possibly too many on the next. There's a lot of guitars, with various guitar players doing a myriad of styles. Some of it's heavy jazz."

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