was announced that Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds would be headlining all shows at Australia and New Zealand's travelling Big Day Out Festival. Reception Commercial performance Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds sold 55,000 copies after two days of sale, more than twice as many copies as its nearest rival, Letters by The X Factor winner Matt Cardle. On 23 October 2011, the album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, with first-week sales of 122,530 copies. In comparison the debut album by the band of Noel's brother Liam Gallagher, Beady Eye's Different Gear, Still Speeding, sold 66,817 copies when it debuted at number three on the chart in March 2011 and has since sold 166,609 copies in the UK as of January 2012. On 11 November 2011, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds was certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for shipments of 300,000 units in the UK. As of February 2012 the album has sold 600,000 copies in the UK. The album was the fourteenth best-selling album in the UK in 2011. It was also the second biggest-selling rock album of 2011 in the UK, behind Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto. As of 2 January 2013 the album has sold 739,000 copies in the UK. As February 2015 the album has sold 2.5 million copies worldwide. Critical reception Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds received positive reviews from music critics. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 69 based on 33 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The BBC review praised Gallagher for continuing the proven formula of songwriting he adopted in Oasis, describing the album as an "enjoyable record". Despite giving it a rating of eight out of ten the NME claimed that the album may have benefited from the vocals of former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher. Writing for The Daily Telegraph, critic Neil McCormick awarded the album the highest rating possible, claiming that "High Flying Birds is the best collection of [Noel] Gallagher tunes since his Morning Glory days", referring to the critically acclaimed 1995 Oasis album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? as a benchmark for the album. Website Digital Spy took a similar view, proposing that "Despite all the hints to the contrary, Gallagher has managed to shrug off potentially suffocating expectations to record what could be his best album since (What's