Paul Gets Back to the Country
McCartney returns to the pastorale sound of his early solo work for a laid-back gem
Paul McCartney returns to the sound of his early solo work for a laid-back gem.
Paul McCartney
III
CAPITOL
★★★★☆
Every decade should kick off with a Paul McCartney one-man-band album — and this one needs it more than most. McCartney III carries on his tradition of homemade solo records, in the mode of his acoustic 1970 debut and his 1980 synth-pop oddity McCartney II. Like its two predecessors, it’s Macca at his most playful. He’s not sweating about being a legend, a genius, or a Beatle — just a family man kicking back in quarantine, writing a few songs to keep his juices flowing. It’s the warmest and friendliest of quarantine albums — it’s basically Ram meets Folklore.
Like the rest of us, Macca’s been in lockdown, hanging out on the farm with his daughter, grandchildren on his knee, strumming his acoustic guitar in the English summer sun. He wrote, played, and produced nearly all of McCartney III, full of his folksy fingerpicking. Back in the Seventies, one of his Wings bandmates called him “just a farmer who plays guitar,” and that’s the vibe
he’s going for here. Paul hasn’t sounded so rustic since his earliest solo days, from “Mary Had a Little Lamb” to “Mull of Kintyre.” When he sings about sheep and chickens, you know he means actual sheep and chickens, not metaphors.
McCartney III works best when he leans all the way into the solo-acoustic concept. He starts off with the marvelous “Long Tailed Winter Bird,” with a couple of minutes of frenzied folk guitar before he even begins to sing. There is also the yacht-rock ballad “Women and Wives” and the Abbey Roadstyle goof “Lavatory Lil.”
McCartney’s been on a songwriting roll recently. It’s been just two years since the excellent Egypt Station, one of his finest solo records ever, with the Alex Chilton-style guitar meditation “Dominoes” definitely an all-time Top 10 McCartney classic. Egypt Station was also a Number One hit, and never think for a moment Macca doesn’t take that to heart. It was his first chart-topper since Tug of War in 1982, setting a new record for the longest stretch between Number One albums.
McCartney III isn’t ambitious like Egypt Station — like his first two self-titled solo statements, it’s a spontaneous palette cleanser after a labored studio project. The only duds on McCartney III come when he turns up the synths and rocks out. The album peaks high with “The Kiss of Venus,” a pastoral romance that floats like an updated “Mother Nature’s Son,” as he hits poignant high notes in his superbly weathered voice. He ends with “Winter Bird/When Winter Comes,” a hard-bitten tale of farm life. At first, it sounds like a farmers’ almanac of chores: “Must dig a drain by the carrot patch.” But it’s also a portrait of late-life domestic bliss, with elderly lovers warming by the fire, which gives the song surprising emotional power — like a flip side to “When I’m Sixty-Four,” with Paul looking back from the edge of 78. On McCartney III, he’s not raging against the winter — it’s just a chance for the master to kick back and smile away.