Macca at his playful best
‘Iknow there must be other ways of feeling free / But this is what I wanna do, who I wanna be,’’ yells Paul McCartney over a stew of heavy guitars, grungy bass and thumping drums. Although McCartney III is essentially a product of the pandemic, it is perhaps the most joyous response to lockdown imaginable.
With advice mandating minimal social contact for people in his age bracket, the 78-year-old superstar has spent isolation recording an album on which he plays all the instruments.
He has done this before in presumably less stressful conditions, so the III indicates its connection to his post-Beatles solo debut, McCartney, in 1970, and his first post-Wings offering, McCartney II (1980).
What all these albums share is a sense of playfulness. McCartney is trying to please no-one more than himself, with results that should also please anyone who ever loved his particular way with melody, harmony, rhythm and song.
There is a sequence here as good as anything in his solo catalogue. Deep Deep Feeling is the standout, a moody and soulful midtempo exploration of emotion, always McCartney’s driving impulse. ‘‘Sometimes I wish it would stay, sometimes I wish it would go away,’’ is his simple mantra of the joy and pain alluded to in the title, in a sonorous arrangement that expands lusciously across nearly nine minutes’ running time. Slidin’ is a rocking belter, and The Kiss of Venus is a delicate treat in which McCartney’s tender falsetto follows his picked guitars. Seize The Day has the swagger of a Wings anthem, replete with juicy period guitar and keyboard sounds, and a jaunty lyric preaching ‘‘it’s still all right to be nice’’. Such a typically positive Macca message doesn’t sound quite as trite as it once might have in our social media trolling age. And then comes Deep Down ,a soulful groove built up from luscious Hammond organ chords on which he really sings his socks off, wailing with an abandon once heard on outros to Let It Be and Hey Jude.
There are also a handful of oddities, quirky little ditties that creak around the edges, but that too is part of McCartney’s charm, a willingness to be silly and play around with whimsical ideas. McCartney carries a weight of expectation heavier than any other popular musician alive. As a Beatle, his voice and style influenced everything that followed in his wake, and when you hear that voice thinned out with age, you can’t avoid echoes of past glories.
On Pretty Boys, he reaches across time to address the absurdity of pop stardom: ‘‘Meet the pretty boys / A line of bicycles for hire / Objects of desire.’’ It’s a little slip of a song, but there is a playful ease that suggests McCartney himself feels at peace with his past.
McCartney III is unadulterated Macca, with a little bit of cheese on the side, the sound of one of the greatest songwriters of our time, having the time of his life.
McCartney is trying to please no-one more than himself, with results that should also please anyone who ever loved his particular way with melody, harmony, rhythm and song.