Album Review: "New" - Paul McCartney

"New": B.  The Beatles were so huge in early 1964 that even those of us on the North Dakota prairie outposts were more than well aware of what was going on.  It didn't hurt that we were able to pull in rock stations from Winnipeg, Regina and (sometimes) Bismarck, not to mention Minot's own KCJB.  We were listening to the Liverpool lads' songs for several weeks before we ever got to see what they looked like. Once they'd appeared on the Ed Sulivan Show in February, you could not go ten minutes without hearing one of their songs on the radio, our primary source for music.

Sometimes it would be hard to tell which Beatle was singing lead, particularly trying to distinguish between Paul and George.  In some photos, they even looked alike.  After awhile it became easier to identify their voices.  One time the press asked the Beatles how they determined which of the four should sing the lead on any given song.  "Whoever knows the most words" was the reply.

I remember pulling up to North Hill Bowl with a car full of kids in January '64 when a Beatles tune came on the radio just as we were about to go in.  None of us had heard it before.  The two songs which had been getting the most air play were their first two big (# 1) US hits, I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You.  But this time the tune was I Saw Her Standing There.  All six of us stayed in the car and listened to it in its entirety, a practice which lived on throughout Beatlemania.  It turned out that I Saw Her Standing There was the flip side (aka "B-side") to I Want To Hold Your Hand.  The former was so great that it eventually charted separately on Billboard, peaking at # 14.  This marked the first of several occasions when the Beatles had a two-sided hit stateside.  Other such double dippers included Please Please Me with From Me To You, Love Me Do with P.S. I Love You, A Hard Day's Night with I Should Have Known Better, and I Feel Fine with She's A Woman, just to name a few.

When the Beatles split in 1970, there immediately surfaced a worldwide hope that someday they would reunite.  But as the years went by and more rumors, both confirmed and unsubstantiated, surfaced about the intra-band friction, most realists knew it was permanently over.  All four of the Beatles, even Ringo, almost immediately released solo albums following the breakup, evidence that they had each foreseen the band's demise well ahead of time and thus were undertaking a different career path.

Paul McCartney has been prolific. In the forty-three post-Beatles years leading up to 2013, he had released twenty-three studio albums, of which fifteen were "solos."  A couple of weeks ago, the sixteenth hit the market: New.  It is Paul's first studio album since 2007's Memory Almost Full. Yep, even at age 71, the Cute Beatle is still making new music.

The thirteen songs on New noticeably fall onto the pop side of the pop-rock spectrum.  While credit must be given to McCartney for his use of a wide variety of instruments, sounds and themes, I would have been happier with a change of pace rocker or two interspersed among the mostly tepid melodies.

The most interesting track on the album is Early Days, in which McCartney surprisingly points the accusatory finger at the (supposedly) young critics who dismiss the music of the Fab Four.  His voice sounds tired -- even warbled -- as he takes on the role of defender, a surprise move by someone who you'd think would let his music speak for itself.  Instead he states his case, saying in so many words that unless you were there during the early days and witnessed all the hard work that went into the band's songs, you do not have the bona fides to turn up your nose at the music.

Now everybody seems to have their own opinion

Of who did this and who did that

But as for me I don't see how they can remember

When they weren't where it was at.

There are not many songs in the post-Beatles catalogue which so personally reflect the singer's days with the band.  Only George Harrison's When We Was Fab and his tribute to the departed John Lennon, All Those Years Ago, immediately come to mind.

The most beautiful song on New is the final track, Scared.  McCartney told the press that he wrote it for his new bride, Nancy Shevell, whom he married in 2011.  Accompanied only by a melodic piano, and using birds as a metaphor, he confesses to his love that he can't quite get the words out to tell her how much she means to him. 

The beautiful birds won't come out of their cage

Though I'm trying to set them free.

One of my favorite Beatles songs from the "middle stage" of their career is Penny Lane, which by the way is half of yet another example of their double-sided hits (the B-side being Strawberry Fields Forever).  The title track (New) to Paul's new album has an uncanny resemblance to that 1967 hit, each containing the same bouncy beat using the same instrumentation, including terrific percussion.  New is another song reportedly written for Nancy.  The message is an appropriate one for a man to sing to his bride:  I did not have a real plan for the future until I met you.  Now I have direction. 

All my life

I never knew

What I could be, what I could do

Then we were new.

After Paul's bitter divorce from wife # 2, Heather Mills, in 2008, one can certainly understand his joy at finding love again.  Therein lies the explanation of why at least two songs on New are dedicated to Nancy.

Since I have just compared one of the new New songs to a Beatles oldie, allow me to offer one more.  If you are a fan of the somewhat bizarre instrumentation and distortion found in their Revolver album, you must give Appreciate a listen.  I would be surprised if you did not think that Appreciate brings back memories of Tomorrow Never Knows.

As mentioned above, you'd be hard-pressed to find a rocker on New, but there is quite a nice little toe tapper called Everybody Out There.  Some might even label it "jangle pop," which, as a sub-genre that originated with the Byrds in 1965, has enjoyed a comeback in recent years.  Unlike many songs with a serious message, the delivery is upbeat. 

... there but for the grace of God go you and I,

Do some good before you say goodbye.

Perhaps Paul simply was not in the mood to rock this time around.  (Well, okay; the first cut, Save Us, is uptempo, but to be honest, it's not a very good offering.)  He is, after all, the composer of Silly Love Songs from his Wings days.  He has not really rocked out much at all since 1999's Run Devil Run, his eleventh solo album.  But surely he is cognizant of the feedback he gets from his live performance fans whenever he launches into a rockin' Beatles tune.  Why doesn't he attempt to replicate that style on some of his new stuff? I remember seeing him in concert several years ago.  The fans cheered wildly for every Beatles rocker on the set list, and recognized them in a matter of two or three notes.  Drive My Car, with its unique, short instrumental intro, is a good example of that phenomenon.  The fans were on top of it from the get-go.

If any artist has earned the right to record whatever strikes his fancy, that would be Paul.  I guess if I'm looking for McCartney rockers I can always play I'm Down and Long Tall Sally (songs on which he sang lead as a Beatle) back-to-back on my i-pod.  But I hope hitting age 71 is not the line of demarcation separating rock from strictly pop.  If so, I only have five more years before I might be forced to change my name to Johnny Pop.