The Decemberist
Paul McCartney is a Knight. He was also a Beatle. And in the final act of his long career, he has re-emerged as a fascinating recording artist.
It is always a risky thing to sing “Hope I die before get old” when you’re 21, and then find yourself singing that same song 40 years later. Age is hard on rock stars, as Pete Townshend would attest.
But old age was never really a problem for Paul McCartney. Even at the age of 25, he was writing songs like Your Mother Should Know and When I’m 64. In the latter, he pictured himself as an eccentric pensioner pottering about the house. He is 66 now, perhaps an eccentric, but not exactly pottering. The ex-Beatle is hell-bent on proving that he is still as creatively vital as he was in his halcyon 20s— which would be a recipe for disaster if he wasn’t actually coming out with great albums that more than hint at a late career renaissance.
First, he reintroduced us to his songwriting nous with 2005’s excellent Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, and then, delivered cheerful pop nuggets on 2007s Memory Almost Full. And then, at the fag-end of 2008, came his new album Electric Arguments. It’s not strictly a McCartney album, as official catalogues go—it is credited to The Fireman, an electro-experimental outfit he formed in the Nineties with the producer Youth. The latter is a big enough presence here to warrant the co-billing, even if his primary job is to make Paul McCartney sound less like Paul McCartney and more like another sonic texture in an aurally dense album. On the other hand, this is a full McCartney album. Not only did he write all the songs, he recorded them on the same day they were written, a song a day for 13 days spread over a year.
Album opener Nothing Too Much Just out of Sight is a ferocious bluesrocker with a nasty bite. The fact that he still has the pipes to sing like this is astonishing enough. Opening with a bang, he then settles down and shows off. The scratchy acoustic Two Magpies is excellent in its faux-jazz arrangement while Sing the Changes sees him channelling his Wingsera output.
McCartney’s voice, with its wide range and expression, has a huge impact. On the dark Travelling Light, it alternates between two extreme registers. Add to that a fondness for grooves, as on the riff-laden Highway, and much of Indie rock sounds anemic to what he serves up here. The two collaborators get really experimental in the final third of the album. On Universal Here, Everlasting Now they create a dense tapestry of ruminative piano, found sounds and disembodied voices while on Lovers in a Dream they float away into the ether.
Why was this not released as an official McCartney album? In the Beatles’ White Album, the classic pop of Martha My Dear co-existed with the proto-metal of Helter Skelter and the screwball comedy of Why Don’t We do it in the Road. The sad truth is that the effortless pop-craft and leftfield experiments that co-existed during McCartney’s early career have long since been carved up into two parallel careers. This is a shame, considering how good this album is. No wonder Bob Dylan has this to say of him, “I'm in awe of McCartney. He's got the gift for melody, he's got the rhythm. He can play any instrument. And he can sing the ballad as good as anybody. I mean, I just wish he'd quit!”
Paul McCartney
First, he reintroduced us to his songwriting nous with 2005’s excellent Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, and then, delivered cheerful pop nuggets on 2007s Memory Almost Full. And then, at the fag-end of 2008, came his new album Electric Arguments. It’s not strictly a McCartney album, as official catalogues go—it is credited to The Fireman, an electro-experimental outfit he formed in the Nineties with the producer Youth. The latter is a big enough presence here to warrant the co-billing, even if his primary job is to make Paul McCartney sound less like Paul McCartney and more like another sonic texture in an aurally dense album. On the other hand, this is a full McCartney album. Not only did he write all the songs, he recorded them on the same day they were written, a song a day for 13 days spread over a year.
Album opener Nothing Too Much Just out of Sight is a ferocious bluesrocker with a nasty bite. The fact that he still has the pipes to sing like this is astonishing enough. Opening with a bang, he then settles down and shows off. The scratchy acoustic Two Magpies is excellent in its faux-jazz arrangement while Sing the Changes sees him channelling his Wingsera output.
McCartney’s voice, with its wide range and expression, has a huge impact. On the dark Travelling Light, it alternates between two extreme registers. Add to that a fondness for grooves, as on the riff-laden Highway, and much of Indie rock sounds anemic to what he serves up here. The two collaborators get really experimental in the final third of the album. On Universal Here, Everlasting Now they create a dense tapestry of ruminative piano, found sounds and disembodied voices while on Lovers in a Dream they float away into the ether.
Why was this not released as an official McCartney album? In the Beatles’ White Album, the classic pop of Martha My Dear co-existed with the proto-metal of Helter Skelter and the screwball comedy of Why Don’t We do it in the Road. The sad truth is that the effortless pop-craft and leftfield experiments that co-existed during McCartney’s early career have long since been carved up into two parallel careers. This is a shame, considering how good this album is. No wonder Bob Dylan has this to say of him, “I'm in awe of McCartney. He's got the gift for melody, he's got the rhythm. He can play any instrument. And he can sing the ballad as good as anybody. I mean, I just wish he'd quit!”
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