C/D Paul McCartney Solo

"Hope of Deliverance" is a charming little tune.

i finally picked up a vinyl copy of Flowers in the Dirt recently - first time i've owned it since unloading the Paul McCartney Collection expanded CD circa, idk, 2004? and i'm having a fantastic sunday night right now because this album is sounding amazing, every single track, whole way through. okay i'm not super stoked that "motor of love" just started but i'm feeling confident that its spacey sugary 80s production will sound a lot better in 2020 than even a few years ago. man, those "ah, ah ah ah" backing things are VERY "i'm not in love," aren't there?

oh WEIRD the vinyl edition did not include "Ou Est Le Soleil?"

maybe I'll buy that then, because that song is easily the worst thing on the album

haha i've always been weirdly fond of it. tho it is kinda stupid. i'm just too used to it as a refreshing palate-cleansing closer after "motor of love." but then in turn, thanks to that deluxe CD, i've also imagined the ideal conclusion as "back on my feet" followed by "loveliest thing."

I adore "Figure of Eight," "We Got Married" (a "No More Lonely Nights" redux that works), and "This One."

and the self-produced "Distraction," with its Clare Fischer arrangement, is pleasantly barmy

Kinda gets almost a Tom Waits kinda sounding growl at points.

― earlnash, Tuesday, August 13, 2019 6:06 PM (five months ago) bookmarkflaglink

spun “ram” on a whim today, this same thought occurred to me during MMD.

i’ll never stop being confounded by people who can’t get down with “uncle albert/admiral halsey” — first part especially. those layered, sighing backing vocals are so intense and beautiful

It’s a lovely song and yet, also part of the Monty Python canon for me

holy shit how have i never heard this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9QcUEQS7cw

There's a mono Ram knocking around online in various places and stone me if that isn't absolutely fantastic. A proper hard copy costs a fortune.

Also this,

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

reveals that there's a nice drop of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE-53NCcpDw

in there somewhere

huh I don't hear it myself

Drum fill used in Johnny Ryall

Mono Ram may be a fold-down?

Nice interview with Alan Alda:

https://www.aldacommunicationtraining.com/podcasts/

McCartney's album closers have weird shit.

Good list. The only ones I knew without checking were "Great Day," "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five," "The Back Seat of My Car" and "Nod Your Head," probably because they're the only ones I've come back to (and I agree, all good to great closers).

I heard "Freedom" was thrown-in at the last minute, maybe even after the album had already been mastered. Awful as shit, and I believe McCartney himself later regretted it.

haha we definitely go to Macca for different things --- the RRS medley and Kreen-Akrore would have easily made "sound, solid" for me, and "Morse Moose" and "Baby's Request" are faves. can't argue with 1985, BSOMC, and Warm and Beautiful in the highest ranking though.

The high note of Warm and Beautiful has always been 👀 to me.

Bar one kind-of-synthy 8 minute mini-epic this new one is...not good.

I've never been a huge fan of his solo work, but the new one's a step in the right direction. He's usually had better success when he's paired with a really good producer, but at least when he's alone he's free to be more eccentric.

"Deep Deep Feeling" seems to be a little polarizing with some critics hating it and others lovings it. It sounds kind of dragged out to me, like it should have been condensed (or at least edited), but count me in among those who consider it a highlight.

"Long Tailed Winter Bird," "Pretty Boys," "The Kiss of Venus" and "Winter Bird/When Winter Comes" are pretty good too...not a great album, but honestly, I think it's one of his better ones, just typically hit-or-miss.

*loving it

"Deep Deep Feeling" is the only one I can hang with after two listens to the album. The rest feels tired and tossed off or, at its best, demos.

*like demos.

The rest feels tired and tossed off or, at its best, like demos.

The defense over McCartney and McCartney II is that they're "charming" precisely because they're casually done, and how they're basically experimental home recordings long before those types of records became far more prevalent. I always felt that was an overblown take of those records, neither of which I particularly like, but I imagine people who love those other two albums may love this one for the same reason.

There is now 657 pages on the thread devoted to this album on the Hoffman boards

Two (ok now six) tracks in and this is pretty delightful. I mean, each song sounds like he just started laying tracks down, layering them and seeing where it took him while he added his Paul melodic twists and turns on top.

I mean, put aside that that’s kind of a neat trick for pushing yourself into doing things differently and avoiding falling into the old traps – the guy is doing this at 78 years-old.

Admittedly I haven’t been paying as close attention the last decade or so but this is also the first record I’ve heard of his where he is really embracing his lower, more bellow-y voice register to full effect and blending it with the raspier voice he’s had for a bit longer.

I like this album about as much as Egypt Station, which is to say, it's alright and as much as I would expect from him at this age. if this were anything other than a quarantine written/recorded album I don't think it would rate very high at all but it gets a little bit of leeway considering. one of the songs is older though, and has his touring band on it.

I think Electric Arguments is his last great album; the trio of Chaos, Memory, and that album are a pretty amazing run.

The best tracks from Chaos and Memory would add up to his best album of originals, IMHO, but the mid-to-late '00s were pretty amazing. I even went to my first McCartney concert in 2009, and it was WAY beyond my expectations - the best touring band he's ever had post-Beatles, and just two duds in an otherwise long and impeccable setlist.

Anyway, Chaos benefits from Godrich's production, but Memory has a better and more consistent batch of songs.

What were the duds?

Who decided Idris Elba should be tasked with interviewing him?

"I even went to my first McCartney concert in 2009, and it was WAY beyond my expectations"

I saw him 2019 and he was still great. I mean he's pretty amazing for being almost 80. That's why I temper my expectations a fair amount with his output now. This record is fine. I've thought each album since Chaos was going to be his last and now I expect him to be putting shit out for another 20 years.

i would really love to see paul live, i'm sure he does a swell job, but it's my opinion that this record sucks

i'm saying this as somebody who has a lot of time for i & ii

I know very little about McCartney's solo work and put this on as a lark and I really like it! I guess... I thought it would remind me of Wings or his 80s hits? And this is just not like that at all? "Long Tailed Winter Bird" goes to authentically weird places!

What were the duds?

"My Love" and a goopy version of "The Long and Winding Road" slathered with horrendously fake-sounding synth strings.

i can picture that, oof

thoroughly bored by the album but i appreciate the concept of "lavatory lil" and wouldn't mind a whole album of home recordings of bonus songs for the abbey road medley.

“You’re a melody god.”
“You know Idris, it’s magic!”#McCartneyIII #PaulMcCartney @idriselba @BBCOne @PaulMcCartney pic.twitter.com/xJcRoCWcSO

— sir paul mccartney 🎲 (@Page_SirPaul) December 19, 2020

That interview was totally embarrassing. Only good bit was when Idris Elba took out his guitar and you thought "fuck no!" but then he just wanted to play guess the chord. Kind of fizzled out when McCartney kept getting them wrong though.

pic.twitter.com/GwaL7CJeml

— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) May 25, 2021

They made a video for Beck's remix of McCartney's "Find My Way." Apparently they put someone in a fake-looking Beatle wig and did a face-plant of a de-aged Paul's face. It looks too off at first, but after a while it just looks entrancingly weird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2Q4hAQ4fEw

Rick Rubin talks to Mccartney 3,2, 1 thing on Hulu

There are a few moments of that in this, where it’s like the high-rent version of that “SNL” skit with Chris Farley on the elevator, with McCartney acceding that his former group was, in fact, awesome. But there’s really not a lot of that over the three hours of Q&A. Most of the time when Rubin is getting his idol to join him in a light head-bang, he starts fiddling with the board and pulls up a stem of an instrumental curio and just asks McCartney how he or they came up with something that ingeniously odd. And he always has an answer, and if you care about this recording stuff, the whole series exists somewhere around the intersection of catnip and nirvana.

1. McCartney mimes John Lennon’s rhythm guitar part for “All My Loving,” which sounds like a relaxed song but, when you pull it apart, has Lennon doing something deeply frantic. “You try doing that for three minutes,” says McCartney, pantomiming Lennon’s furious strumming, before patting his sore arm.

6. Rubin plays the isolated track of John, Paul and George all holding an extended, wordless harmony in “Dear Prudence” to an extent that, like that piccolo-trumpet note, seems inhuman. “It’s fun when you’re playing around and you’re pushing yourself,” he says, not noting whether the other two finally agreed.

7. “In the early days one of our things was, if the producer doesn’t notice the mistake, it’s not a mistake.” Said while pointing out a mistake audible in an isolated track of “Another Girl.”

8. McCartney used to be a guitarist, alongside Lennon, in the first incarnation of their band, then had stage fright one night in Liverpool. “After that, I thought no more lead.” Except, of course, for all the times he badgered someone else about how to play a lead guitar solo and then they just told him to do it, like George Harrison handing over the reins on “Taxman.” “It was kind of an awkward thing; if you’d had a good idea for something you’d say it, the other guy would say, ‘You play it.'” His rationale for being a control freak on that one: “The track’s so cooking, and if we’re gonna have a solo, it should be ridiculous.”

9. He had a role model for his famously melodious bass lines. “It was a double eded sword. People would say, ‘Can’t you play straighter?’ I did get reprimanded once or twice for being too busy, but by that point, I’d heard James Jamerson.”

https://variety.com/2021/music/reviews/paul-mccartney-rick-rubin-hulu-series-television-review-1235023237/

Lennon himself said he plays a "mean" rhythm guitar on "All My Loving."

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

My keepers after much trouble.

I could nitpick, but really, that's a good list.

Yeah, that is a good list.

"Jet"'s a perfect number one. "Letting Go" is one I didn't notice too much until Paul played it at the last show I was at, that's also a good pick.

"Wanderlust" and "No Other Baby" are also big personal favorites - I don't think either was ever a "hit" so they may be nice surprises for skeptics unfamiliar with the deep cuts.

Nice to see the beautifully washed out “One of These Days” getting love

<3 Mrs Vanderbilt