![]() “ You never used to be afraid of days like this and now you’re overwhelmed by your anxiety,” he sings on ‘Find My Way’, “ L et me help you round, let me be your guy”. Ultimately, though he may not have been as short on outside space as the rest of us, Paul certainly intends ‘McCartney III’ as a source of Covid consolation. There’s a Beatling freedom to the record you can’t imagine what’s coming at you next. ‘Women And Wives’, a wise and austere piano shuffle worthy of Nick Cave or Johnny Cash, finds itself sandwiched between a sweet, glitchy acoustic tribute to the art of male modelling (‘Pretty Boys’) and a spite-fuelled ‘50s roadhouse rocker aimed at an untrustworthy ex-associate cruelly cast as ‘Lavatory Lil’: “ You think she’s being friendly but she’s looking for a Bentley”. ‘Deep Deep Feeling’ gives way to the monstrous psych metal riffage of ‘Slidin’’, the sound of the man who wrote ‘Helter Skelter’ returning to see how his creation has grown ‘Slidin’, in turn, cedes ground to a charmingly vaudevillian falsetto folk ditty called ‘The Kiss Of Venus’, a kissing cousin of The Beatles’ ‘Mother Nature’s Son’ inspired, bizarrely, by an astrology book Paul was given by Jools Holland’s wife. A ‘White Album’ sort of eclecticism was key to the greatness of 2018’s ‘Egypt Station’, and ‘McCartney III’ is even more chameleonic. In fact, where ‘McCartney III’ really breaks from the lineage of its eponymous forebears is in its sheer unpredictability. Like its 1980 predecessor, ‘McCartney III’ finds him, at the very least, out to keep pace with the times. That Macca manages to concoct such material without the guiding hands of recent producers Greg Kurstin, Mark Ronson and Paul Epworth is testament to an unending quest for evolution. Eight-minute album centrepiece ‘Deep Deep Feeling’ may be overlong and lathered with emotional cheese (“ You know that deep, deep feeling when you feel your heart is gonna burst… it almost hurts, it’s such a deep emotion?” no Paul, what on Earth are you on about?), but it’s built around a crisp rhythmic electro-noir woven from Portishead strings, The xx pianos and wailing War On Drugs guitars. ![]() ![]() So ‘Find My Way’ is a Beck-like future-pop sizzler laced with echoes of ‘Revolver’ tune ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ brass and Wings-style hula-rock riffs. In between, as you’d expect from a legend who’s been pushing his electronic boundaries on recent albums such as ‘2018’s ‘Egypt Station’, Sir Paul approaches the record with the same adventuring spirit as he did ‘McCartney II’, even as his solitary situation demands he revive his game in terms of classic Macca melodies. Along with its album-ending coda, it helps to shroud the album in a rootsy, pastoral intimacy fitting for the times and akin to (although significantly meatier than) ‘McCartney’. Opener ‘Long Tailed Winter Bird’ strikes up a swampy blues beat beneath raw and ragged acoustic riffs, emulating a very different form of isolation: the Delta bluesman in his tumbledown shack. The record initially throws back even further than 1970. Y’know, even if you don’t happen to be self-isolating in a private studio in a converted Sussex mill. And ‘McCartney III’ acts as a signifier and motivation for what can be achieved. No one yet knows what the music world will look like once the vaccine kicks in, or even how much of it will survive, but with the swift evolution of livestreaming, solitary writing and home recording during 2020, it’s likely to be leaner and more streamlined for the next decade. Recorded solo during lockdown in March, it doesn’t so much reflect a turning tide in McCartney’s life and music, but a wider pandemic-inspired shift. ‘McCartney III’ arrives with no such musical era to end, but certainly has a new one to start.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |