C/D Paul McCartney Solo

To me it's the alternately overstuffed mixes and too-clean recordings of individual tracks that merit another pass on this particular album. There's others where chorus and reverb are totally the boogeymen but the pushed snares only rankle in a few places. "Motor of Love" is like "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" slowed down and sucked dry of life. But, to be fair, I might like it a lot if you stripped Macca's lead vocals off, added some barely-intelligible recordings of household conversations and wordless vocal chants, and told me it was a new Memory Tapes cut. But to the extent that it's meant to be a song, it just feels like a not-very-good thirty-second nugget has been stretched out to six minutes with McCartney trusting the producers to add things to massage it all out.

"My Brave Face" is just a shade too trebley, too clean, lacking in mid-range or something... maybe I'm being too dogmatic about what I expect out of a pop-rock song. I don't necessarily want it to sound like "Young Boy" or "Hope of Deliverance" either. The thing is though with that one the songwriting and lyric are ace and so the 'period' elements are something I basically accept as part of the recording even if I can imagine it having more life and warmth at a different moment. It's like how I think the pre-Revolver Beatles albums are fucking great even if I will always wish they'd turned the drums way up.

xp
For me, the 80s stuff I don't like from McCartney that regards productions (and not the songs themselves) has to do w/a sterility that tends to rob the power of otherwise good songs (imo his '83-89 period suffers from this a lot). Lots of 60s/70s artists struggled with this in the 80s, and it's not really a matter of the production itself being inherently bad, but artists not really using it in a way that optimized what it could do. Like, no one is complaining that YMO used too much gated reverb.

wish they'd done just one roots alb tho

Martin Denny was their roots!

Motor of Love" is like "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" slowed down and sucked dry of life.

Chris Hughes of TFF produced it so

Lots of 60s/70s artists struggled with this in the 80s, and it's not really a matter of the production itself being inherently bad, but artists not really using it in a way that optimized what it could do.

Or ageing dickheads that are unable to embrace change wanting their favourite artist to be stuck in a time capsule and not make a record that sounds current.

I think albums like Now and Zen, Cloud Nine and Back in the High Life tried plenty hard to sound current AND play up the nostalgia card, but ymmv on those productions.

I'd say Shaken 'n' Stirred but point taken

Robert Plant sampling his old band -- was that a first?

lol from the interview:

In 1988, Costello and McCartney returned to the studio. The idea is that Costello would co-produce the new record. As they worked, they realized they had different ideas. One day, they were talking about “That Day is Done,” a gospel-inspired ballad. Costello wanted to use New Orleans brass. McCartney referenced the Human League. Costello left the studio to calm himself down.

McCartney: This is one of the rules of my game. I will say stuff, any idea that comes into my head. And if you don’t like it, you just tell me and I’ll probably agree. But my method is to throw out a lot of stuff and whittle it down. [Pause.] Actually, he was really not a fan of the Human League. I like “Don’t You Want Me.” [Hums the chorus.] I think that’s, like, a classic pop record. . . . I can now see now that me even mentioning the words Human League would send him off in the wrong direction.

Stuff like the snare drum sound on 'Motor of Love' isn't actually "gated reverb" at all. If we're talking about what "gated reverb" is on snare drums, it's a large amount of reverb applied to the source signal (the snare) and then a noise gate is applied so that the reverb only lasts as long as the snare hit and then cuts out completely, which results in a fattened drum sound without hearing the "decay" of the reverb. The snare sound on 'Motor of Love' is not gated, it's just a large amount of artificial reverb placed on the snare drum. It's the opposite of gated reverb in that it has a long decay time.

Now 'Strangehold', that's "gated reverb"!

Ok, good points. I still think the drums on Motor of Love are distracting and bad though!

Boiling it down to either embracing bold contempiraneity or forbidding all change is reductive. I like the sound of plenty of records from this period, I love some of Paul's experiments with new sounds (McCartney II for example), and even on this album I think some songs sound better than others. I just don't think he had a strong ear for those sounds, a sure instinct of when and how to use them in a song (or build a song around them), and his long-standing "hey that sounds neat, let's use it" instincts seem to be failing. The multi-producer approach speaks to this imho, he's looking for other people to sort it all out for him. Maybe it came from the label tho, idk.

xxpost Ugh man I knew there was a reason i could never stand EC haha

Listening to this album, I forgot how much I love "Put It There". My dad passed away last month and listening to this one made me tear up.

Sorry for your loss. That song has a real intimacy and warmth. And Martin's string arrangement is a deft touch.

I'm sorry to hear that, Darin.

I lost my dad last year, and that song has come into my mind more than once since then. I've always thought it was a really lovely tune, but I think as a teenager I found it a little hokey and distanced myself from it, whereas as an adult I can really appreciate the sincerity of an idea like that. Which also describes, in a small way, certain things about how I related to my dad. And he was generally, of the two of us, the one to make a point of reaching out and saying something useful like "don't be a stranger, stay in touch," even if generally he was pretty vague emotionally in that guys-who-don't-verbalize-feelings way. Which reminds me of the father in this song, making the choice to extend an olive branch when maybe his inertial tendency would be to stay silent. I was his youngest son, too.

So... tearing up, yeah. I'm with you.

Thanks to both of you. And sorry for your loss, too, Doctor Casino.

Appreciate it, Darin. For what it's worth, not knowing your situation at all, but for me at least it has gotten easier with time.

Hope I didn't sound too cavalier in my earlier post, Darin. I just meant that song hits such a perfectly warm note – I can only imagine listening to it thinking back to one's own relationship to their father after he's passed.

I continue to be really blown away by these Costello demos on this record. WaPo interview suggests that McCartney himself now believes these were the best things to come out of these sessions by some distance. I am inclined to agree.

That said, the whole Human League thing is both hilarious and instructive. For one, Paul was absolutely right to admire them as he did (as did Horn, which may explain the former's desire to work with the latter). Even if HL were about five years past their sell date while Paul was pimping them in 1988, Costello's purist reaction to the mere suggestion is exactly why he's kind of insufferable – and, I suspect, why Paul ultimately didn't want to keep working with him. Say what you will about Paul and whimsy, but "I didn't want to make an Elvis Costello record" cuts about as deeply as anything Lennon ever said.

LOL, just noticed that Spotify is missing the last three tracks of Press to Play. They're not unavailable or greyed out – they're not there at all.

Pretty sure I'm the only person in the known universe who has noticed this.

If you're referring to 'Write Away', 'It's Not True' and 'Tough on a Tightrope', then they never really were part of the album proper anyway.

Talking about Press to Play, I heard 'Move Over Busker' for the first time in ages the other day and actually found myself thinking it was pretty decent.

I think 'Move Over Busker' is the track on the album where the song and the production are least suited to one another, I can imagine it being recorded more like Smile Away from Ram or something. I like the production on Press for the most part though

this alternate mix of Angry is much better than the one on the album imo:

https://youtu.be/DX6rz64xNNY

I like the way "Rough Ride" sits in the album. McCartney goes to Propaganda-land. It definitely sounds like it was written in an afernoon but still pretty cool due to its Horn/Lipson glossiness. YMMV of course depending on how much you dig Horn/Lipson.

I love Propaganda, Horn and Lipson and feel confident in saying that song eats it.

Shifting gears, I'm digging into Pipes of Peace on Spotify. Notwithstanding its rep as "leftovers from Tug of War," this is a more interesting and experimental record than it is given credit for – certainly more interesting than its predecessor's somewhat unremarkable exercise in formalism and LA Express smooth jazz. Paul's melodic touch is in good form throughout – I've always been a fan of "So Bad" (which received pretty heavy airplay on MTV IIRC) and "The Other Me" is a minor hidden gem. "Average Person" could be straight off London Town were it it for the more modern production. Also both MJ collabs, "The Man" in particular, are high quality. All told, there's less filler on this than any other post-1975 Paul record I can think of.

Also, given that his slide into 80s survivor mode would otherwise feel almost too easy, I appreciate the left turns on this record: the Linndrum sound, the sawing Martin orchestrations on things like "Keep Under Cover," and the weird mashup that is "Tug of Peace."

Demos on the expanded version, particularly on oddball stuff like "It's Not On," show he was very much on his game – and point to some of the studio experiments he'd be exploring in the years ahead.

A pleasant if extremely belated discovery.

Hmm. I completely disagree, to be honest, especially about the comment about it having less filler than any of his post-1975 albums... I think Pipes of Peace is one of McCartney's weaker albums, although it has a fair amount of highlights on it. It's certainly down there near the bottom of the pile for me. What he really should have done was release the best of the stuff as an EP, and perhaps bundled it with Tug of War as the Pipes of Peace EP.

I'd say 'Pipes of Peace', 'Say Say Say', 'So Bad' and 'The Man' were the keepers. Destroy the rest without hesitation.

Yeah that's what I thought ... and then I re-listened to it. Far more holds up than I remembered.

I don't listen to Driving Rain as often as some of McCartney's other LP's, so it's been quite pleasant to revisit how fucking awesome 'Rinse the Raindrops' is.

'rinse the raindrops' is incredible, but you have to stop the album before 'freedom' starts playing

it's like following a banquet with shitty vanilla ice cream

I couldn't agree more. 'Freedom' is def. bottom of the pile McCartney for me. Something like 'Rinse the Raindrops' though, shit! ... when McCartney leaves us and the obituaries are being written and people finally dig deep into his post-Beatles discography, they're gonna hear things like 'Rinse the Raindrops' and go "fuck! I never knew McCartney was doing stuff like that!" and I'll be like "told ya!"

New Swede Mason is relevant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4EcRPlaXoQ

fantastic

it has been a long time since i've seen something as funny

That is hilarious. A friend just sent me the Swedemason clip and I came here to post it and ... that's the most recent post, from almost a year ago.

New single:

Paul McCartney’s latest single is produced by Ryan Tedder and has a chorus that goes “I just wanna/Fuh You” https://t.co/UGy3MNKCM7

— Stephen Thomas Erlewine (@sterlewine) August 15, 2018

I don't know what to say other than I find it ... very catchy.

just another in a v long line of embarassing Macca sexual innuendos

"fuh" doesn't even rise to the level of innuendo

Ha! I like the fact that McCartney is still doing shit like that at the age of 76.

this is the age of the horny septuagenarian

I'm sure our British fans will hate this, but I thought it was pretty fun, and even kinda moving:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjvzCTqkBDQ

fans members

The new song sounds like something Ed Sheeran would toss off and discard for being too sappy. It's not like it's Paul's first ever misstep, of course, but even at his worst he's always sounded like he's following his own ideas, this isn't even that.

That’s about the least charitable reading of this possible but it may not be far off. Throughout McCartney’s solo career he has followed his various muses – one of which is to do “his” version of artists he admires. It’s led to some of his best stuff (“Arrow Thru Me” = Aja-era Steely Dan, “Summer Day’s Song” = BaAS-era Eno) and plenty of pablum. Perhaps this is his Sheeran nick. Or maybe it’s just his Viagra-era update of “Press.” Regardless, I love that he’s still doing it.

“I just wanna fuh ... YOUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!”

FUH! All Night!

it really sucks