The simple things
Made in ‘rockdown’, his third simultaneously slight and profound entirely solo album.
Paul McCartney ★★★★ McCartney III
FIFTY YEARS ago, as therapy for the messy divorce of his incredible band, Paul McCartney free-associated onto a record, the bowl of cherries album, McCartney (as in, not Lennon/McCartney), a suite of doodles, lovetokens and tentative steps towards an uncertain future. It came as a shock to listeners used to the perfection and ambition of his Beatles stuff. Nothing rivalling She’s Leaving Home, Hey Jude or the finale of Abbey Road. But that album effectively let him reset his terms and conditions. Subsequent listeners realised that McCartney in lightningsketch mode could be as delightful as the master working in oils.
These anxious times have tapped another well-spring. Work on When Winter Comes, an unfinished song from the ’90s, for a movie project, inspired a companion piece, the bluesy Long Tailed Winter Bird. Those two tracks provided an entrance and exit to something, with a bucolic charm reminiscent of McCartney, and, unexpectedly, Paul found himself fashioning a collection of songs to go between them, playing everything himself, working only with an engineer, conjuring his third, all-solo offering.
What are his motives after 57 years of fame? He surely has nothing left to prove. Is he simply pleasing himself? To still wish, as Springsteen portentously puts it, to “conduct the conversation” after all this time is quite something. That’s addressed, in a way, on the literal centrepiece of this album, Deep Deep Feeling, a startling, eight-minute rumination on dealing with intense emotion that “burns in an ocean of love”. Here is a 78-year-old guy telling us how exquisitely painful his love is. It’s uncomfortably like eavesdropping. But it’s also ardent, fascinating, musically astute, structurally complex and suggests one will, after listening through one’s fingers for a while, grow to adore it.
What does the man who made I Wanna Hold Your Hand mean in the time of Wet Assed Pussy? I doubt that question was uppermost in his mind as he worked, but it must occur to the people who have to market it. Actually, III’s simplicity and unexpected stylistic leaps chime with modern taste. If anything klaxons his vintage it’s Lavatory Lil, a song exactly as old-hat as you’d imagine – “You think she’s being friendly, but she’s looking for a Bentley” – a hackneyed conversation that didn’t need conducting. It’s a skipper.
The heavy-riffed Slidin’ takes a decent crack at Royal Blood or Black Keys. Pretty Boys is a tuneful oddity starring a photographer. The goodtimey, piano-led Seize The Day reminded me of Hello Goodbye. Deep Down is an understated groover with an under-written “party every night” lyric that outstays its welcome. Women And Wives feels remarkably like late-period Johnny Cash. If the wobbly falsetto on Kiss Of Venus suggests McCartney’s trademark acuity is no longer a given, 1994’s When Winter Comes, about the routine on a farm, underlines how his voice has changed.
Just like McCartneys I and II, III is a confounding cocktail of genius and misfires. If it feels like Paul is oversharing, undercooking, or this isn’t what you ordered, my advice is, just give it a few years.