"McCartney's New Album Deemed Best in Years"

Insert old fart of choice

uhhhh............what!?

sometimes i think the people at AP might be the laziest writers outside of a 10th grade english clasroom.

this is almost as bad as making non-news news. (why not "paul McCarney is not dead" ... well, the again, that was news once)

xpost - man, that totally ruined it.

no, his voice sounds pretty old on most of it. it sounds better than it did on some of Driving Rain, but he still slips into "grandma mccartney" voice on a lot of the slow songs.

I don't know. I'll have to hear the album. In a way, the charge is a serious one. It implies that there was some contrivance in the songwriting process.

I know how easy it is to do, because I've done it myself. I thought of my 1997 album "Ping Pong" as a "return to core Momus values", and it was partly influenced by the fact that some younger artists in London at the time seemed to be influenced by my work. I tried to hear my own work through their ears, hear what they were specifically attracted to, and focus on making more work in that vein. Instead of trying to become someone else, expand, I tried to become myself, or rather, my earlier self, as curated by these young whippersnappers (people like Anthony of Jack, Dickon of Orlando). The result was a sort of self-parody, in the form of songs like "My Pervert Doppelganger". So I can hear when another artist is doing this consolidation, self-curation thing. I don't think it's criminal, but I do think it qualifies as pandering to the audience. That's what I feel about Bowie now; he's stopped trying to be other people, and is just trying to be himself, pandering to the people who love his old work by making more of the same. But of course the old work contained this divergent movement, this desire to be a new person, and the new work contains a convergent movement, the desire to be who you "are", so the attempt always fails.

momus is probably right, bu he's also completely beside the point. nobody's expecting paul mccartney to break any sound barriers. he's never been a self-reinventor, why should he start now? and if anyone's allowed to sound like the beatles, he is.

i think mick jagger just can't be bothered getting a new haircut. he's worth 300 million, he doesn't give a shit. no hackneyed secondhand pomo theorizing necessary to explain it.

That piece on your blog is ironic. You champion a solo Moog composition Jagger did for a Kenneth Anger film and John and Yoko's Erection film as alternatives to the McCartney and Bowie approaches. Why? Because these things are examples of radical modernism? What does this have to do with art today?

If the production on Chaos and Creation in the Backyard is veering more toward a postmodern approach, that's good. (I don't know how successful it is yet. Haven't heard the album yet.) Driving Rain could have benefited a lot from more postmodern ideas for arrangements and production.

I don't know if i would call the new records production postmodern but it certainly sounds good. I love some of the unusual intrumentation and it adds a lot to something like Jenny Wren for example.

Honestly, how ridiculous! Disagree with my arguments if you like, but don't post silly lies intended to smear my motives. The last time I worked with a producer was 1987. I produce all my own work. I have never had any contact whatsoever with Nigel Godrich. I couldn't afford him, and I wouldn't choose him even if I could. If I wanted a producer I'd probably choose Rusty Santos.

I'm amazed to discover that McCartney thinks anything he's ever done was actually crap

I wanted to make the point that marketing tends to pressurize artists to be either divergent (exciting, new, different) or convergent (an old, trusted, established brand). Often an artist breaks into the market as a diverger and, if he's still around 40 years later, ends it as a converger. This is more a marketing requirement than a necessary or natural artistic trajectory. (Left to their own devices, divergers don't necessarily become convergers as they age.) And it contains a paradox: how do you consolidate your established brand if your brand image, established when you were young, is disorientation, constant change, experimentation? It's this paradox which makes any artist who established a radical image in the 60s and early 70s look, now, like an impersonator of themselves. I linked to the radical side projects by Lennon and Jagger to show a parallel paradox: that for these artists, discontinuity would be the best guarantor of continuity with their young selves.

The Wire is a good example of the marketing trope I mention above; they tend to cover you either when you're a divergent young Turk promising to save the avant garde, or when you're a chuffing old whitebeard wearing a beaded African hat and living in a converted windmill. The February 2035 Wire cover is mine!

I actually think he has a bit of a downer on a lot of things he's recorded and has admitted as much in interviews and this is especially the case with a lot of the 70's Wings stuff.

I wish he viewed them with more affection as I'd be more likely to see him live if he trotted out some of the slightly less well known tracks from the Wings/solo stuff rather than just pandering to the unadventurous. I'm sure it's the same people who go to see his shows all the time so you'd think they'd have enough knowledge and appreciation of him to go with him if he decided to do that.

Says Paul.

Actually, there was a fan vote on songs they'd like to hear Paul do on the current tour and these where the top vote getters (a pretty f-ing cool list, actually):

1. Helter Skelter
2. The Night Before
3. Nineteen Hundred Eighty-Five
4. Mull of Kintyre
5. Back Seat of My Car
6. Hold Me Tight
7. Silly Love Songs
8. No More Lonely Nights
9. When I'm 64
10. Beautiful Night
11. Calico Skies
12. Hi Hi Hi
13. Junior's Farm
14. World Tonight
15. Day Tripper
16. Lovely Rita
17. Helen Wheels
18. Venus & Mars/Rock Show
19. Oh, Darling
20. Ob-la-di ob-la-da
21. Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey
22. Letting Go
23. Beware My Love
24. Figure of Eight
25. Press
26. Stranglehold
27. I've Had Enough
28. I Will
29. Girl's School
30. Big Barn Bed
31. Hope Of Deliverance
32. Rocky Raccoon
33. Martha My Dear
34. Take It Away
35. Monkeberry Moon Delight
36. Young Boy
37. Why Don't We Do It In The Road
38. Getting Closer
39. So Glad To See You Here
40. Daytime Nighttime Suffering

WTF???? I guess his fans are cooler than I thought.

Okay, "Rusty", humor me by telling me where we ate dinner together in July. Restaurant, street. If you can't do that, you're about as much Rusty Santos as I'm Marissa Marchant.

What he has rediscovered--and you heard this recover some with Driving Rain (or more likely, you didn')--is his sense of pop dynamics -- denser, more compelling textures, extended instrumental passages like the early Schoenbergian string intro to "English Tea". And that might have more to do with Godrich than anything else, whose production is admirable here if only for putting him such an obviously comfortable setting.

Still, this idea that McCartney's calculating something with this record is, in a word, horseshit. As is the idea that "Jenny Wren" is some new gem -- for all its virtues (which are mostly those dynamics again), the song isn't in the same league as "I'm Carrying" much less the pantheon of classic acoustic McCartney balladry.

Oddly enough, the chorus of "Friends To Go" has the melodic contour of a Bryan Ferry song whose title is escaping me at the moment. And no, there's no way it was intentional.

Problem is, Momus could very well be Marissa Marchant (and then, of course, delight himself by saying something like the above quote).

That's a very good point, but I think your essay somewhat inflates the unpredictability of the young Beatles and Stones. The Beatles were a recognizable brand as early as 1962, and, although they undeniably took their fans on a ride of their lives over the next several years, they haven't quite broken out of character as spectacularly as your theory would suggest. Harrison's infatuation with Indian music, for instance (mirrored by the Rolling Stones' own sitar experiments) may have been intriguing, odd, titillating, but it was never SHOCKING in a sense that would make people withdraw from the band in fear and disgust. (McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio, on the other hand, did!). The true discontinuity of the kind that you posit would probably require the Beatles to go straight-edge in 1967, or record an album of jazz instrumentals in 1969.

But the reason experimentalism does sometimes work within the context of pop/rock is precisely because those genres are so tightly prescribed and conventional. So the experimentalism has something tight to play off, rather than disappearing into its own navel. Counter-intuitively, the tighter the convention, the more interesting the experiments can be.

hey netik, don't fuck with the formula, huh?

Netik: honestly, I think it is among the very best The Beatles ever did. Only the "spoken word parts" sounds dated. I have yet to grow tired of that track, Revolution 9. I tend to think of it as the CO-herent result after the Two Virgins experimentation, (that pop-historical foreplay of sorts!), which I'm not very fond of - well, apart from as an art act & object in itself - and rarely listen to. "Unfinished" is the word - hm, maybe one should try an work more on it, "finish" it oneself? I think Yoko might like that concept. Yoko is awesome.

ha, well the music (most of which I love), but the film is even more dated!

And were it not for the obviously Martin-esque strings on several songs, I don't think anyone would have a leg to stand on as to whether this sounds like some kind of parody. Points, btw, for the Queen vocal harmonies with Moog backing on "Promise To You Girl"...

x-post or what Tim said

thank fucking god

-- kyle (akmonda...), September 19th, 2005.

The god to whom I pray wants Macca recording ba-rococco pop. The more hysterical the arrangements and melodies, the more likely that both will mitigate his cuteness and charm.

Geir absolutely loves it. I decided early on that it's his best since "Flowers In The Dirt". Upon further listenings, it dawns on me it must be his best since "Tug Of War". Absolutely brilliant, and so nice to hear an old man in his 60s returning to form in such a great way.

However, slower and more reflective tracks like "At The Mercy", "A Certain Softness" and "Riding To Vanity Fair" (the latter being the one track that clearly carries the Godrich stamp here) are all among his best ever solo moments.

Basically, that's the only weakness of the album the way I see it. It has so many strengths, however, that it doesn't matter to me, but the lack of a "My Brave Face" or "This One" means I am afraid there is no obvious hit single or radio stable to make this album the big seller it would have deserved.

Except he hasn't! See "I'm Still Here" from Alice. (But I know what you mean.)

It's not sad at all, letting it stand would have meant letting an identity thief go unchallenged.

Thanks, Tom!

Yes, pity there's no "Freedom" here...

"Kisses on the Bottom" from a 69 year old man.

take it to redtube

"____________'s New Album Deemed Best in Years"
Insert old fart of choice

― Raymond Douglas Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 13 September 2005 12:03 (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We need a 'Rolling Old Fart's New Album Deemed Best in Years' thread

Old Fart!!!'s New Album Deemed Best in Years

Doesn't Dylan own that sentence?

Bowie used to , but..

Yeah, Dylan's the king of this really; McCartney is a leading practitioner too; everyone's given up on Van Morrison ever putting out an album that doesn't sound like his 200 previous albums; after having put out a few albums that actually lived up to the the hype Neil Young is getting there; Leonard Cohen doesn't put out enough albums; Lou Reed actually tries different things but he's usually the worst thing about them.... any others?

I'm sure Dylan got a lot of this for a long while, but from Time Out Of Mind to Love & Theft to Modern Times it was more "still going!" than "a comeback!" and i'm pretty sure nobody said "best in years" for Together Through For Life

I dunno, Wiki has "generally favourable", and it made number 1 over here...

I didn't say people hated it, I said people didn't say "best in years." Reviews were relatively muted compared to the five-star action the last decade's haul got.

bowie seems like a better example of someone where every album was a "comeback" album

Every Rolling Stones album starting with Steel Wheels was "their best since Some Girls!"

yeah bowie and stones are probably the most consistent examples of "y'know how i said the last one the best in years? ok, so i might've jumped the gun on that one but THIS ONE..."

ha xpost

I would say Springsteen but The Rising seems to have kept its esteem, not that i can imagine wanting to hear it.

the problem with figuring this out is knowing Rolling Stone likes to do this for every damn boomer

The Beastie Boys may have entered this pantheon

oh and eminem

yeah Beasties may be the new school kings

but yeah Bruce, Elvis Costello, a lot of others have kind of hit a plateau where that narrative doesn't regenerate itself as persistently anymore

In dylan's case it was true, and croup is right, reception of together through life was muted in comparison to the last few

If you count his book, the radio show, the studio records, and the bootleg series stuff that came out, you could argue dylan did his greatest volume of good work since the 60s

haha if you count releases of old archival recordings then lots of boomer artists have been doing their best work since the '60s in recent years

Neil Young also in the "yeah yeah we know you're BACK" category.

haha if you count releases of old archival recordings then lots of boomer artists Van Halen have been doing their best work since the '60s- '80s.

Of course, every 'other' Fall album.

when REM reached this category it was a sad triumph as a longtime fan

Come on, people - PRINCE is the answer you're looking for here.

oh and eminem

I hate to break it to you but eminem is never going to make any more good music ever

some dude: like who? I can't think of many ppl that have out as much significant unreleased or live stuff as the bootleg series

Neil's the only one that comes close

And either way dylan put out three amazing studio albums in a row

Aye, sure he did

Sonic Youth fell into this camp circa, I dunno, Washing Machine, A Thousand Leaves, or at latest Murray Street.

Depeche and the Cure are very much in this cycle.

Murray street rules, I would listen to that right now over daydream nation

some dude: like who? I can't think of many ppl that have out as much significant unreleased or live stuff as the bootleg series

― dave coolier (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, February 10, 2012 10:20 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure not AS MUCH as Dylan in terms of volume, but i mean you might as well call The Promise or The Smile Sessions a 'comeback record'

Depeche and the Cure are very much in this cycle.

"First album for ages" is not the same thing.

Yes, Kate Bush is excluded for that reason too

Is four years between albums too much, then?

Madonna?

Scanning all the suggestions for this category in the last 25 posts, I don't see any that strike me as egregious. Pretty much anybody I've ever cared about crosses this line eventually, from Neil Young to the Rolling Stones to Yo La Tengo. They still make great music, but for me it happens a track at a time, and the most realistic expectation is two or three an album. If you're lucky--it might be more like one every two or three albums.

well anyone no-one is going to say this about the new mccartney album, which is pretty good, for what it is, but not his best in years by any measure.

Yeah, Dylan's the king of this really... any others?

― Charles Kennedy Jumped Up, He Called 'Oh No'. (Tom D.), Friday, February 10, 2012

Best Album Since Blood On The Tracks

I think he's got an album of original songs coming out later this year?

http://www.paulmccartney.com/news-blogs/news/27656-new-album-artwork-reveal

high hopes

(for the album, not the artwork)

Talk about hedging your bets with Paul Epworth and Mark Ronson and George Martin's son.

Anyway, I heard it's his best album in years.

I am assuming he did old songs last night in Hollywood on the Jimmy Kimmel show

http://www.paulmccartney.com/news-blogs/tour-blog