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The Fireman (aka Paul McCartney and Youth) “Electric Arguments” (EMI)
Nothing Too Much Just Outta Site!/Two Magpies/Sing The
Changes/Travelling Light/Highway/Light From Your Lighthouse/Sun Is
Shining/Dance Till We're High/Lifelong Passion/Is This Love?/Lovers In A
Dream/Universal Here, Everlasting Now/Don't Stop Running
The
Album:
'Ullo,
this is the Fireman here, talking to you from your 'fire' place - isn't it
grate?! People often ask me - do I smoke? The answer is yes - but only when I'm
on fire! They also ask me what I have for breakfast: hmm strawberries, ships,
oceans, forests, the usual. Hmm what's that smoking? A Spice Girls CD? I doubt
it! It must be Alan's Album Archives mascot Max The Singing Dog, I mean - he's
hot stuff isn't he? Ho-hum. Well that makes sense. You see, this record is a
chance to extinguish who I am, just a warm place inside your head! No no Sam I
ain't no anagram, I'm a dog not a God and this album is 'rife' with 'fire' and,
erm, 'erif' whatever that may be. (Repeat ad infinitum for about sixteen hours
of webchat)
After two 'is it? isn't it?' records, Paul McCartney
finally came clean that he was indeed 'The Fireman' (with producer Youth his
chief commander), producer of two ambient dance records in the 1990s ignored by
all but curious Beatle fans who'd heard rumours and recognised a couple of very
McCartneyesque melodies lurking across the LPs. Clearly a relative of Percy
'Thrills' Thrillington (maybe even Sgt Pepper), 'The Fireman' was an
opportunity for Paul to go beyond what his fans would have been expecting from
him, with a record that played to Paul's musical strengths: his speed, his
skill at improvisation and his sheer innate musical ability. For unlike his
recent records 'Chaos and Creation' and 'Memory Almost Full' (re-shaped and
re-moulded until they sounded 'old', with all the life sucked out of them),
'Electric Arguments' is an almost entirely 'improvised' album, with the 'band'
consisting of lots of McCartneys overdubbed on top of each other, working
towards a key or a rhythm suggested by producer Youth. Compared to the year or
so spent slogging away on each of the last two albums, every single track on
'Electric Arguments' was recorded in a day, often in an afternoon, across a
mere fortnight (making this is the 'quickest' McCartrney record of this length
since 'Wildlife'). The results aren't to everyone's tastes ('Arguments' is
weirder than the average McCartney LP) but are the more interesting swing of
McCartney's typically Geminian pendulum after years in the mainstream and
prove, for the first time in a decade or more, that there's more to Paul's art
than most a nice tune and a silly lyric. The best McCartney album in an awfully
long time, 'Electric Arguments' finally got Paul some credibility back (which
being Paul he then promptly lost with his next release: an album of crooning
standards!) The result is an album that smoulders for most of the first half,
as you adjust yourself to Macca’s new sound, but then catches fire for most of
the middle and burns the house down by the end. It won’t sit up and grab you the way that some
McCartney albums do, but it will draw you in once you get past the shock of the
'new' sound.
We said in our review for ‘Press To Play’ that it
was crying shame that Macca got pilloried for experimenting with his sound, as
that album’s entertaining attempts to re-style Paul as a contemporary pioneer
rather than a traditionalist might have changed his reputation forever if taken
in the right spirit. Sadly that record's cool reception seemed to drain Sir
Paul of the need to step outside the comfortable little box he had unwittingly
made for himself as a mainstream singer-songwriter and led to 20 years of
albums that may have been good but rarely showed what Paul could really do when
pushed. Before the first Fireman album came out ten years or so ago, I never
thought I’d ever get to hear a McCartney album like this again – bold, daring,
mischievous, breaking boundaries with every turn and seemingly wilfully
destroying our idea of who we think Paul McCartney is. Just like his first solo
album ‘McCartney’ (1970) and the overlooked ‘McCartney II’ (1980), this album
is a real fan divide, featuring Paul playing everything and pushing the
envelope often further than it will comfortably go (the old Beatle joke that
one day Paul was going to push his audience with an avant garde solo album
called 'Paul McCartney goes too far' has now become a trilogy to match John and
Yoko's 'Unfinished Music' releases, albeit far more entertaining). Like many a
McCartney release, it left many fans split down the middle. The devoted fans
who’ve always known about McCartney’s wide-spanning talents will lap it up and
wonder why Macca has never gone whole-hog into improvisation like this before;
the general public will scratch their heads and ask why there’s no ‘Blackbird’
or ‘Yesterday’ here to savour.
However for me what many fans missed is that the
closest album to this in Macca’s discography is ‘Driving Rain’ (2001), an
overlooked and often troubled album that had several sketchy-but-nice ditties
hidden away in it and similarly ended with a made-up 10 minute magnum opus. That
makes sense because it's effectively the closing 'bookend' to Driving Rain's
'entry' and both albums are about loss and grief tinged with hope for better
days ahead. 'Driving Rain' was of course written for Linda, being the first
'proper' record made after her death (and the first one the McCartneys hadn't
sat down and planned together) but the grief of losing a soulmate was tinged
with the breath of life Heather Mills had brought into Paul's life. This album
is of course the other extreme: recorded during Paul's drawn-out much-discussed
divorce from Heather (with neither aside coming out that well from the
court-case, although thanks to some hi-jinks with a bottle of water thrown at
Paul's attorneys, Heather came off worse). The record starts with the single
angriest song in the McCartney canon (one that would eat previous songs 'Angry'
and 'I've Had Enough' for breakfast!), a Lennon primal screamer about betrayal
that features Paul pushed right to his limits. Like 'Ram' (which opened with
the Lennon taunting 'Too Many People') and 'Driving Rain' (which opened with
'Lonely Road') it's notable that Paul should write with what is foremost on his
mind and a feeling of helplessness and rage that doesn't bubble to the surface
in his art that often. However like those records, once that opening song is
out the way 'Electric Arguments settles down after getting that out of its
system, with happier songs about Paul's growing friendship with Nancy Shevell
(a mutual friend of his and Linda's that will become his third wife in 2011),
although like 'Ram' and 'Driving Rain'
this album still bares it's teeth from time to time.
Paul named this record after a line from a poem by
Allen Ginsburg, one of his favourite poets, 'From Kansas City to St Louis' and
claimed that he chose the line because he liked it rather than any actual
significance to the record (Ginsburg even inscribed a dedication to Paul in a
book of 'selected verse' named 'TV Baby Poems' that contained this poem, which
was presented by Paul to a charity auction in 1978). However you can see why
this poem would have appealed to the more nostalgic McCartney we've known ever
since 'The Beatles Anthology' was commissioned in 1995. The most famous song
about 'Kansas City' was the Little Richard song that - along with 'Lucille'
'Hound-dog' and 'Twenty Flight Rock' - got Paul into rock and roll in the first
place and the one that he was still singing every so often at his live shows,
forever associated with him after the performance on 'Beatles For Sale'. St
Louis was where he lived for a time with Heather Mills and did a lot of work
for charity in the wake of the natural disasters that hit that city in the
first half of the 2000s. While Paul didn't make the 'physical' journey between
the two, he clearly identified with the
psychological one. The idea of 'arguments' were in the air too after the by now
very public and very Un-McCartney rows in court and all over the media, while
this album could be considered an 'argument' over whether Paul should stay in
his usual musical persona or branch out (with the word 'electric' not far from
the 'electronic' sound of this album).
Many people wondered why Paul decided to stick this
album out under his ‘Fireman’ pseudonym, even though this album is far more
like a ‘proper’ McCartney album than his two previous collaborations with
producer Youth. The answer seems to be that it was simply more 'fun' that way,
with McCartney using a persona - one who isn't enecessaroly well loved and
adored by millions, without all the baggage that came of being one of the
world's most recognised persons (just look at the fun Macca had getting into
character on any of the 'web-chats'# to promote this album, all of which
featured Paul in a 'Lennon' ish mask which he never took off and was written in
cryptic comments (although Paul couldn't resist a 'thumbs up' to camera at the end
of each 'event which rather gave the game away!) Recording incognito (sort of)
must hold a certain fascination for the most famous living musician on the
planet and it’s easy to see why – in this post-Heather Mills, post-tabloid
frenzy phase of his long career – Macca wants to return to his ‘Sgt Peppers’
concept and ‘become’ some other musician, one who doesn’t have some of the most
popular songs of modern times hanging like a millstone round his neck. (To
quote the front cover – ‘The fireman is no nickname, just a warm place in the
head’). The earlier Fireman albums – ‘Rushes’ (1997) and ‘Liverpool Collage’
(1999) – did the job and it was only avid Beatles fans who believed muttered
rumours who ever knew that these albums did feature McCartney. In truth,
though, from the few extracts I know, these albums could have been by anybody –
crunching vegetables set to tape loops and spacey keyboard instrumentals, with
only the odd so obviously McCartneyesque tune I'd have also believed this was
an album by one of the Rutles. This is, you see, the first time McCartney can be
heard actually singing on a Fireman record and the first to be given lyrics: a
conscious statement, then, that Paul would 'step out' of his public image in
the public eye (it was only in the lead-up to this album that Paul made any
claim to the earlier Fireman records at all). This record actually disappointed
a handful of people who'd known those Fireman records, feeling that Paul had
passed on the 'spacey' feel of both hypnotic recordings. But this third record
is far better than either of them, with enough spacey ambient melodies of its
own but also a bit of structure to them, while adding lyrics makes this record a
braver statement than either of these first two records. Throughout McCartney
stays true to the 'Fireman' principle of pretending to be somebody else: few
hearing the grunts of the opening track or the deep growl of 'Traveling Light'
would guess at this being McCartney still had his name not been on the sleeve,
while the most McCartneyesque songs here (the happy go lucky ones like 'Sun Is
Shining' and 'Highway') sound all the better for their unusual backing tracks.
Paul admitted in interviews for this record that
he'd grown tired of making recording a 'lengthy' process and adopted Neil
Young's 'first thought best thought' policy to see if it worked for him. This
is of course a notoriously hard thing to do, especially for a musician with
nothing to prove and no practical interest in whether a record sells or not
(Beatle royalties alone mean Paul need never record another note). Now,
record-the-same-time-as-your-muse-hits–you albums have always been a mixed
blessing. Just look at the career of his fellow AAA artist Neil Young, whose
recorded-in-a-week albums have provided him with unarguable career highs
(‘Tonight’s The Night’, ‘Sleeps With Angels’) and some of his most woeful
career lows (‘Broken Arrow’, ‘Greendale’). But Paul is a prime candidate for
the working process of being kept on his toes: that's how both Lennon and Elvis
Costello have gone on record as saying that Paul is at his best, before his
'perfectionism' gets in the way ('Hey Jude' for instance, long regarded as one
of Paul's greatest lyrics, was 'blocked in' while he was meant to think of
something else). Fans have always known that melodies seem to fall out of Macca
with ridiculous ease and McCartney’s subconscious has always been one of the
hardest-working in rock – providing him with no less than two fully formed
songs in his sleep (‘Yesterday’ and ‘No Values’) – and his recent albums have
been heading towards string-of-consciousness lyrics rather than his traditional
‘story-songs’ for a while now. While only a handful of the melodies here
approach his best work – and none of the lyrics, fragmented as they are, ever comes
close – the fact that these songs were recorded at the rate of one a day shows
what a fertile sub-conscious McCartney still has. What's more this album sounds
like an artist engaging with his craft again: too many McCartney albums sound
tired because their creator sounds tired ('Chaos and Creation' is the sound of
a man whose toured the world more times than most politicians and doesn't want
to do this for a living anymore). But this 'Fireman' element of McCartney
sounds inspired, lively, bouncy - the way he always used to sound before the
weight of The Beatles split, Wings and various dramas got in the way. 'Electric
Arguments' was compared on release to a Beatles album. That's not really true -
'Flaming Pie' is the most obviously 'Beatley' album in Paul's discography,
which is precisely why it falls so flat (he's done all this stuff before when
inspired, so why bother recycling it now he's tired?) But by being the first
McCartney album since 'Press To Play' to make fans actively scratch their heads
(while still sounding like songs), 'Electric Arguments' is like a 'Beatles'
album - it goes somewhere new and has fun doing so. And best of all – unlike
the last four or five albums – most of the songs here sound decidedly like
McCartney pieces, without the curse of trying to replicate a specific track
from Paul’s illustrious past (which is where he's been slipping up for most of
the 21st century so far).
Not that the Fireman projects are true solo works,
in the way that 'McCartney' and 'McCartney II' were. Macca has a truly
supportive and sympathetic collaborator again – unlike recent producers Nigel
Godrich and David Kahne, Youth 'understands' McCartney. The general gist we can
gather from interviews is that the former argued too much and tried to take too
much control, while the latter left Paul alone to get on with it. Macca needs
someone a bit in the middle: someone who can push him and inspire him, bouncing
ideas around with him, without telling him what to do (a bit like George Martin
used to do, a helping hand when the band got stuck). Youth is Paul's first
collaborator in a long long time who understands Paul's heritage - and his need
to escape it to produce his best. Throughout he does his best to embellish
McCartney’s ideas, rather than drown them out or argue with him over the
content of his songs; less worried about making an album that has to live up to
Macca’s great reputation that canvassing the many untapped talents Paul still
has in the here and now. You have to say that this on-the-edge-of-the-seat have-to-get-it-done-by-midnight
experiment has really put the shine back into McCartney’s creative soul. For
like 'Sgt Pepper' Paul is free to be whoever he wants to be without
constraints: want to scream and yell? Fine. Want to add a loopy instrumental
section with Hawaiian guitar for a few minutes? No problem. If it doesn't work
we can always throw it away and start again (again, very much in the Beatles
tradition after listening to the Anthology tapes and bootlegs).
Of course, not everything here works – there’s yet
to be a solo McCartney album that doesn’t put a foot wrong somewhere. The
much-talked about opener ‘Nothing Too Much, Just Out Of Sight’ is the most
uncharacteristic song here and seems wilfully designed to challenge the
listener from the beginning, with Macca’s rich and wide-ranging vocals
restricted to a scream for the most part. Rarely for this album, the lyrics do
tell a kind of story, but this tale of being let down by somebody close who
doesn’t ‘have any manners’ doesn’t add much to what we already knew about the
Macca-Heather Mills feud other than it used to be good but then went bad very
quickly and its talk of ‘betrayal’ is moving but not really that revealing.
‘Light From Your Lighthouse’, meanwhile, sounds like one of those toe-curlingly
bad country spoofs the Rolling Stones used to insist on putting on every album,
which is a shame as the lyrics are actually among the best here. Closer ‘Don’t
Stop Running’ also goes slightly too far in its determination to end this most
askew Macca album of recent times on a daring note and alas its use of long
pauses, guitar loops and a section of the song played backwards owes less to
the psychedelic sixties than it does to 1980s new age music. The fact that
these melodies are literally picked out at random (with Youth offering a key or
a chord or an instrument with limited notes as a starting point) means that
this album is never going to be as perfectly orchestrated as past McCartney
classics - but that's somehow freeing in itself, with Paul forced to rely on
his adventurousness for once instead of a tried and trusted regime that's
served him well in the past. Fans know that melodies always fall out of Paul
whenever he needs them, but this shake-up means we get a few melodies that
sound quite un-McCartney-ish at times, such as that opening track for instance.
There's also perhaps one too many experiments that stop the album from seeming
complete and rounded, but like McCartney and McCartney II that also adds to the
experience: somehow this album would be a lot less fun if it was 'perfect'. In other words, even this album's weaknesses
are strengths in a way.
By returning
to that spirit of adventure that marked out the Beatles years, rather than the
melodies or ideas directly 'stolen' (as per 'Flaming Awful Pie' and 'Chaos In
The Backyard and In My Head') Paul also creates his most essentially 'Beatley'
album in a while - particularly the band's more adventurous middle years of
1966-67. The simplistic ‘Two Magpies’ has all the charm (if not the depth) of
‘Blackbird’ in a way that direct replica ‘Jenny Wren’ from 2005 could never
have had in a million years. ‘Travelling Light’ sounds like a ‘White Album’
leftover, the sort of things the Beatles might have sung around the Maharishi’s
campfire, lyrically unsure whether this new ‘phase’ is a temporary development
or the be all and end all of a long career (thankfully the song works equally
well as both). ‘Dance Til’ We’re High’ is the most exuberant and commercial
Macca’s been for ages too – it has more bounce and believability in its middle
eight than the clunky last single ‘Dance Tonight’ could manage in three minutes,
despite breaking far more rules along the way. The rare use of guitars on this
album soar up to the heavens while strings bring the tracks down to earth,
surrounded by ‘bells ringing out together’ and some of the best background
harmonies Macca’s put together this side of Wings. Listen out too for the
opening and closing of ‘Universal Here, Everlasting Now’ – fans of McCartney’s
album ‘Tug Of War’ will recognise this riff as the short but pretty linking
piece ‘Be What You See’ – I’ve been waiting to hear the rest of the song for 26
years and the song hasn’t let me down! ‘Lifelong Passion’ and ‘Is This Love?’
may well be the best of the bunch, slow ambient songs without much going on in
either of them but perfectly judged between atmospherics and subtlety.
‘Lifelong Passion’ is one of Macca’s downright prettiest songs in years, a song
in the monochromatic mould of ‘Winter Rose’ and ‘Footprints’ mould that I’ve
already harked on about several times in this website already. As for ‘Is This
Love?’ there isn’t much going on at all, just a fragile little keyboard at the
heart of the song, surrounded by very modern-sounding synthesisers and very traditional
sounding panpipes. They’re both exactly the sort of thing George Harrison would
have put together for the ‘Wonderwall’ film soundtrack, had that movie come out
in the 90s rather than the 60s – West meets East, with panpipes, sitars and
soaring keyboards set off by growling Macca vocals and the emphasis very much
on creating a believable atmosphere. Moody Blues meets Capercaillie, in short,
and all the better for it.
You may have noticed that, unlike our usual reviews,
we haven't really discussed a 'theme'. That's because, generally speaking,
there isn't one: you could make a stab at one about losing Heather (which is
clearly what 'Nothing Too Much, Just Outtasite' is all about, with 'Two
Magpies' perhaps a last song about their partnership and 'Is This Love?' a
questioning of their suitability). But love, whether falling in it or losing
it, has always been such a McCartney theme that 'Electric Arguments' is
actually quite radical in how little time it spends on 'silly love songs'.
Moreover the way that these songs were made - daily, based around whatever was
going through Paul's head at the time - means that a lot of these lyrics are
closer to stream-of-consciousness than fully thought out ideas and the only
real link between them all is Paul McCartney's subconscious during a fortnight
in 2009. However one thing shines through this album louder than ever before,
despite being common to most McCartney records: optimism. 'Sun Is Shining' is
the belated sequel to 'Every Night', a tired and weary put-upon man finding the
strength to 'get up' and finding the beauty in the world afresh as he does so.
'Dance Till We're High' imagines a future romance with the same passion and
lust as 'I Saw Her Standing There' 45 years earlier. 'Lifelong Passion' is a
pristine McCartney love song, caught between hope and self-doubt. 'Sing The
Changes' admits that life has been tough, but knows that a dark time is coming
to an end and hopes a brighter future is about to arrive. Even the sign of 'Two
Magpies' brings the narrator joy, a 'cosmic' sign he won't always be alone
(contrast with 'Single Pigeon' from 'Red Rose Speedway'). 'Highway' is a 'Long
and Winding Road' where the very length of the road left to travel makes the
narrator thrilled, not saddened (or scared as he will be during 2012's 'Road').
'Electric Arguments' might start in the pit of despair, but as the record gets
going it gets lighter and airier, ready to embrace the future in whatever form
it takes. And that, more than anything else, makes 'Electric Arguments' a
McCartney album, whatever the name credit on the sleeve says.
Overall, then, 'Electric Arguments' is the record
Paul needed to make, capturing him at a vulnerable and 'open' moment in his
life and at just the moment when his life seemed to be taking an upswing for
the better (could it be that simply the process of making this album - and
channelling all the restrictions of the past decade of being on 'auto-pilot'
helped him?) It will never be the sort of record that's a favourite with
everybody and quite a lot of fans actually asked for Paul to go back to the
'Chaos and Creation' way of making records they could understand (nothing new
of course; people said this after 'Sgt Peppers' too, remember - The Beatle Book
magazine's letters page are full of fans asking for records like the 'good old
days'). But I prefer to hear Paul like this: inspired, creative and pioneering,
writing for himself rather than his fans and using that wonderful gift of
spontaneous musicality the way it should always have been used, before worry
deadlines and Pauk's high reputation got in the way of diluting it. There's no
argument from me: 'Electric Arguments' is the side of Paul I like best. The
good news is that, while Paul inevitably swung back the other way on his next
few releases (starting with the 'Kisses On The Bottom' album of standards -
something no one was expecting after this!) even his mainstream albums have a
little of the kick and verve of this record: 'New' for instance is an only
slightly softer version of this record despite having the 'McCartney' name...
The
Songs:
I've often wondered what a McCartney version of the
'Lennon/Plastic Ono Band' album might have sounded like. McCartney never had
the sudden explosions in his character that Lennon did and his first re-action
to problems and people being rude to him was to make friends (ie patching up
whatever hole Lennon had just got them into). However you can't be as
discussed, dissected and disowned as often and as nastily as Paul has so often
been (especially since the shocking manner of Lennon's death unfairly yet
inevitably made John the 'saviour' of the Beatles and McCartney the 'hanger-on'
in many 'outsiders' eyes - the sort of people who assumed that The Beatles had
to have a 'leader' rather than being
democracy at its finest) without that hurting you at some point. Dismissed by
some people as possessing no 'soul' next to Lennon, McCartney's emotions simply
run deeper and don't come to the surface very often - but when they do the
results are spectacular. 'Nothing
Too Much Just Outta Site', the opening track on this album, is a case in
point: a screaming howl of pain that's the McCartney equivalent of 'Mother'
with a touch of 'Don't Let Me Down'. 'I thought you knew - the last thing to do
was to try to betray me!' McCartney howls, surely at ex-wife Heather Mills,
complaining that how can he forget her and move on - he's infatuated, she
insists she's nothing too much, but he still thinks she's 'outtasite!' A
harrowing middle eight gets even scarier and demented, remembering the night
when she claimed to 'love' him: 'I can remember - why did you take me there?'
Throughout the song a wowy, lopsided riff seems to bring the narrator his knees
while reflecting the churning of the once-solid ground underneath him, leaving him
reeling. Like 'Lonely Road' before it, this is a dangerous path, all the
scarier because the narrator has been down it before and knows how dark the
path gets before it ends. Throughout McCartney excels by trying to deliver
something he's never done before, letting himself go 'Helter Skelter' style,
with no inhibitions, ending the song with an angry snarl that sounds more like
the cry of a wounded animal than a national institutions. The guitar work
too (all played by McCartney, remember,
along with the clattering powerful drumming and spooky harmonica) is
impressively heavy and quite unlike anything Macca has delivered before, like
slowed down psychedelia with wailing feedback drawn out to their limits.
However, even in grief there remains a difference between Lennon and McCartney:
while you could come to 'Lennon/Plastic Ono Band' knowing nothing about the
Lennon story and come away with a detailed knowledge of Lennon's childhood and
teenage years, McCartney reveals nothing except how deeply he's wounded.
There's nothing really to tie this song to Heather Mills at all except the
timing - no details are given to us, nothing is really explained. A shocking
edit at 2:30 (in the middle of the line 'nothing too...a hurt me', making it
nonsensical) suggests that something was removed: was this passage of the song
too revealing? If so, why make it so obvious, as if to let us know it was
'there'? (The mix could easily have just cut back to the chorus again). While
this is the sound of McCartney letting fly with emotions - and a highly
impressive sound it is too - it's as if he's still too afraid to go all the way
and reveal everything and wants us to know that fact. This alone prevents
'Nothing Too Much' from being the greatest McCartney song in a decade; that said
it's still in the top quarter, a riveting emotional performance that gets this
album off to a flying start.
'Two Magpies'
starts with the scratchy sound of a demo tape before getting going, instantly
putting us in the frame of mind of 'Driving Rain' (which used that trick
several times, not least with its scratchy packaging shot with a grainy digital
watch). That's apt because this simple improvised song is right back at the
same place Paul was in a decade earlier: so desperately lonely he's pleading for
love and taking anything nature has to offer him as a sign of future happiness.
Birds have always been a 'lucky talisman' for McCartney and by now he's written
a whole flock of them ('Blackbird' 'Single Pigeon' 'Bluebird' 'Jenny Wren'
etc). Legend has it that when Linda was ill she promised to come back and give
Paul 'a sign' that all was well in the afterlife: some reporters have this as a
flock of birds suddenly arriving at Paul's Mull Of Kintyre estate, others a
'feather' left mysteriously in a special place (other reports have this
happening to Yoko after Lennon died as well). This simple song, based around
the old English nursery rhyme of counting magpies, which almost always flock in
pairs ('One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy')
sounds like a man looking for signs, his sub-conscious - put on the spot by
Youth - returning to a theme that's been running round his head: not just 'is
there life after death?' but 'will I ever be happy?' (possibly even 'am I right
to fancy one of your best friends?' as Paul first met Nancy through Linda). Typically,
even in doubt McCartney manages to be 'happy', moving on from Heather 'content
to cry but no more to lie' to himself and to her, reflecting that the 'sign'
gives him the strength to 'face down fear'. A nice backing track features the
double bass once played on the session for 'Heartbreak Hotel' (and bought by
Linda for her husband's birthday one year in the 1970s: another link to her
that might have set his sub-conscious off in this direction) and the laughter
of his then five-year-old daughter Beatrice, again like the Wings days when all
sorts of childhood noises found their way on tape. In typical McCartney style,
everything has changed and yet nothing has - we're right back where he was
first five and then 45 years ago when Paul broke up with Jane Asher. As a song,
though, this is sketchy stuff that's the one song on this album that would have
benefitted from a bit more work and a bit less time pressure, a nice song never
really getting going.
'Sing The
Changes',
the album's near-hit single, is very McCartney too. Like 'Coming Up' this song
promises change and portrays how wonderful it's going to be when it gets here.
While the lyrics make little sense on their own (and are clearly made up to
short order to go along with the pretty riff) certain phrases keep cropping up:
'see the changes - draw the picture' 'hear the choir in the thunder' 'a sense
of childlike wonder' 'every ladder leads to Heaven'. Taken together they
portray a nicely surreal image of weather about to change, that feeling in the
air when something wonderful is about to happen. The title is, of course,
another McCartney pun: 'changes' are what musicians call chord 'changes' and
Stephen Stills, for one, often uses them in his lyrics to reflect the 'changes'
in his life - the switch of keys he's had to navigate in his personal life to
write the song. This song has particularly big wide huge jumps between keys,
the song never quite going where you expect, all tied together thanks to a big
thick woolly blanket of production effects - which makes sense given the wide
jumps McCartney had made since his last LP. Once again his guitar-work and
drumming is top-notch, right at the heart of the song despite the fact that
this track would have been built up piece-meal. I do, however, have no idea
what the curious and nearly inaudible ending is all about ('One day I passed a
jogger, he said 'I can't stop - big time...').
'Travelling
Light'
is a moody song featuring Paul at his deepest, in both senses of the word. A
gravelly vocal takes us on a mystical journey that finds Macca at his most
spiritual: his spirit double passes everywhere around the world and perhaps
other worlds, in search of something or someone. Linda is surely at the heart
of this song which has faint similarities to 'This One'. Another nice backing
track is dominated by flute (or at least a mellotron version of it), putting
back us in the frame of mind of one of Paul's greatest songs 'The Fool On The
Hill'; while not in the same league this song about the mysteries of life is
better than average. Some nice sound effects from rattled bottles and a grand
piano part add to the atmosphere. Interestingly the spirit guide is another
bird - a 'bluebird' - tying back in with 'Two Magpies' and suggesting that
'Bluebird' (from 'Band On The Run') was a deeper song than I ever gave it
credit for (in the 'Yellow Submarine' film, too, the Chief Blue Meany's cousin
is 'the bluebird of happiness' - bet those two had fun at family get-togethers!)
'Highway'
picks up the theme of travel but in an 'earthier' sense and returns to another
favourite McCartney theme: life as a destination with several stop-off points.
By my reckoning this is the earliest mention in song of third wife Nancy
(unless you count a bit of premonition in 'Rocky Raccoon' where everyone knew
the heroine 'as Nancy'!), with the line
'What she's got is what she needs and who she loves is me'.
Interestingly Paul starts the song 'on the run' (as in 'Band on the...') and
'looking like a wreck', a fugitive in search of safe harbour: an accurate
description of how he must have felt during the Heather Mills divorce case
(without many 'bad' things to say about McCartey's behaviour, most turned to
his dress-code, including that hoary old story about him still wearing the warm
coat he bought in an Oxfam shop in 1970 and which appears on the back sleeve of
the 'McCartney' LP in 1970, where daughter Mary once fitted inside as a baby).
A bluesy riff dominated by pianos is the sort of thing that might have sounded
ordinary on other McCartney albums with its quick-stepping rhymes and talking
conversational style (see the title track of 'Flaming Pie' for similar fluff),
but a nice production makes the most of the song, with a fun harmonica riff,
lots of echo even Phil Spector would think twice about using and lots of
variation along the way that keeps things moving. 'Highway' isn't the best song
on the album by a long way, but it may well sound the best, making good use of
McCartney's sudden switches of thought and embracing of new ideas.
'Light From
Your Lighthouse' is the album's weakest song, a country
hoe down that's a duet between a gruff and falsetto Macca vocal. Neither is all
that successful and neither is the melody, which sounds like a second-hand
Johnny Cash song. However a nice guitar solo livens things up and this song
could have been a nice B-side with different words (the ones here use the
metaphor of the title - presumably another ode to Nancy, although it could be
another overhang from the Heather era - a few too many times for comfort). Like
the lighthouse itself, this song looks pretty from a distance but involves too
many stairs leading you round and round and getting you nowhere.
'Sun Is
Shining'
is the most traditionally obvious McCartney song on the album. A pretty melody
that sounds so obvious it should have existed for centuries is played relay
style across several instruments over a ;lengthy opening before the vocal kick
in. Throughout this a wind chimes/church bells sound plays the main riff, the
very image of the 'sun coming up' during the opening verse. Perhaps equating
sunlight with inspiration (more a thing that other writers do, particularly Ray
Davies, but 'Good Day Sunshine' for one hints that Paul has at least thought
once about weather affecting mood), Paul's narrator sings about how lovely the
world looks on a new morning and how different it seems from the cold lonely darkness
of the night before. Like the others, this song was largely improvised on the
spot but I would suggest that it had
been rattling around it's author's head for a while: it's more polished than
some of the other songs here and sounds like more was done to it in the studio.
Once again a largely happy joyful lyric is joined by phrases that suggests
Macca is looking for a sign from nature (or perhaps Linda) that he's doing the
right thing: 'tell me tell me' he pleads near the end for instance. A pretty song,
it's welcome to hear Paul already moving on from the darkness of the 'Heather
Mills years' (or at least the end of them: the song 'Your Loving Flame' from
2001's 'Driving Rain' suggests that, far from being a mere gold-digger, the
pair had feelings for each other in the early years whatever their problems)
and the chorus is instantly hummable and infectious - in fact more memorable
than any from the past two albums designed from the start to be a series of
hummable and infectious pop songs.
'Dance Till
We're High' is perhaps the most fragmentary of these improvised
songs. Once again the narrator finds a sign from nature when snow falls: 'If we
knew what it meant, we would take care' (it might, just possibly, have reminded
Paul of his earlier 1986 song 'Footprints', in which a sad old man spends so
long mourning for his absent loved one he misses the beauty around him: now a
widow himself, Paul may have been jolted by a memory of this). Paul suddenly
'realises' the message is to make the most of life: that the meaning of life is
to 'dance till we're high, together, to light up the sky, together' and
proclaims his announcements with an image of bells ringing out across the sky. Another
song finding 'acceptance' from some mystical force, the song does little past
that revelation - there's just two verses and one lengthy repeated chorus - but
what there is is very sweet indeed. Once again, it's hard not to get wrapped up
in Paul's infectious and melodic enthusiasm and the result is the 'grower' of
the album, a song that's difficult to connect to at first but the track on the
album you'll find yourself coming back to, embellished by a more subtle backing
than normal and a lovely subtle string arrangement that's all the more
effective for not being 'in your face' (even the 'bells', which on another
McCartney album - like 'Chaos and Creation' - would have been overdone to 'make
sure' we got the message, are nicely underplayed here).
The moody 'Lifelong Passion' is the start of a five piece sequence that
holds more in common with the previous two Fireman records and less with Paul's
releases under his own name. A slow and moody near-instrumental, this song
features some nice use of synthesisers and sports another pretty melody. The
lyrics are truly bizarre: Paul's up a mountain, listening to his girlfriend's
'sweet sweet laughter and loving conversation' and taking note of her
'solutions'. A call to 'give me love' and 'be my lifelong passion' then
switches gears to the point where Paul asks her or sees her 'sail away'. A
second verse finds him doing near enough the same somewhere else with 'warm
breezes', where he takes the hand of his unknown companion, kisses her and
finds himself again pleading for love before she too 'sails away'. A lengthy
fade features Paul singing the chorus over and over, but this time the backing
drops away till he's nearly on his own, joined only by a bluesy harmonicas
(traditionally the instrument played by people when they're 'on their own').
Could it be that this is Paul, having just bid goodbye to the two loves of his
life, wondering if he'll get a third and pleading for love? If so then it's a
moving song (well, it's a moving song anyway, whatever's going on), especially
for someone who spent so much of his career singing about the delights of being
in love - we know how much it means to McCartney to have someone to write love
songs too. Another album highlight.
'Is This
Love?'
sounds like an extract from a bonkers new age musical, full of chanting voices
and strange sounds with a suddenly booming chorus. Once again Paul is chasing
'birds' - it's a swallow this time he's on the look out for, willing her to
'come home to me' (is it Heather?) Pausing to himself mid-chase to ask if it's
worth it Paul's narrator stops and asks himself 'is this love?' and never quite
gives a reply, suggesting the answer is 'no' but that's an answer he doesn't
want to admit to just yet. The lyrics on this song are hard to hear - usually a
give-away that they mean something the writer isn't quite sure about letting
out just yet, perhaps they haven't come to terms with it themselves - and play
second fiddle to an ambient backing track that somehow manages to be both still
and restless at the same time, full of some exotic Indian flavoured sounds
(this is the track that particularly sounds like old partner George Harrison's
'Wonderwall' soundtrack with it's marriage of East and West). While peaceful
for the most part (sounding like a meditative trance, perhaps Paul once again
trying to connect with the universe for 'answers')a scary cry of 'help me help
me help me' points at how desperate for answers the questioner is. A sudden
change near the end sounds like Paul coming back to Earth, mumbling something
under his breath while the spacey effects slowly disperse and leave him with a
simple 'throb' of day to day living.
'Lovers In A
Dream'
is closer in spirit and, well, noise to the first two Fireman albums 'Rushes'
and 'Strawberries, Ships, Oceans, Forest'. It sounds like the instrumental
soundtrack to some modern indie movie, with all sorts of noises washing into a
sound based around a wurlitzer Pink Floyd-style organ and an awful lot of
percussion. Paul mutters something just out of earshot ('Lovers in a dream,
warmer than the sun...') that gradually gets louder the more our ears
acclimatise to it (or perhaps they simply turn the volume up - I shall have to
do some scientific testing on a few unsuspecting guinea pigs and get back to
you...) The overall effect is one of chaos and a song that perhaps doesn't work
as well as the other songs on the album, but it's a natural step for the man
who once made eleven minutes of 'Secret Friend' and six of 'Check My Machine',
getting fully into a more updated version of the technology and seeing how far
he can stretch the envelope with just a few ideas and a little technological
knowhow. The theme is interesting: is this Paul's happy memories of life with
Linda? Or a reflection of his better times with Heather? (or even Jane Asher?) The
similarity of this piece to Heather's only musical release 'Voice' (a song made
with McCartney's help, back in the early days of their relationship when they
were still dating) suggests it's her, in which case is the scary 'jungle'
effect of the opening and the sudden awkward spins and turns on the song's axis
significant? (the song starts with a cello doubling as a tiger's roar) Or is it
just McCartney 'reaching out' for words?
'Universal
Here, Everlasting Now' is a prettier instrumental which starts
like a traditional piano piece and bears more than a passing similarity to 'Be
What You See' (the link that segued into 'Dress Me Up As A Robber' on 'Tug Of
War'). A whole host of sound effects are thrown at this one including a barking
dog (which sounds suspiciously like Paul doing another 'Hey Bulldog' style impression),
some whispered voices and an owl hoot (not unlike the one on the soundtrack of
'Rupert and the Frog Song - a few ribbits is all this song is missing,
actually). The song finally gets going some two minutes with an urgent modern
drum rhythm (you know the sort of things, technically accurate but lacking in
all soul) and a few wailing guitar and synth lines but actually I prefer the
atmospheric opening. The title, another typically 'could mean everything, could
mean nothing' Fireman phrase, is about the most interesting thing about this
track.
'Don't Stop
Running'
is the lengthy finale, starting with a burbling cauldron and ending up as
pretty modern-day indie band (the sort of thing the 90s acts who lived the 60s
but used modern technology often sound like - take a bow Stereophonics, Super
Furry Animals and Ocean Colour Scene). Paul has a sort of guide vocal that
weaves throughout the sound with snatches of phrases: 'Modern day...silent
lovers...angels smiling...it's our hearts...don't stop running'. Chances are
this lyric means nothing (it's yet another lyric 'reached' for by Paul in need
of something and grabbing the first thing that came to mind. However it's a
very intriguing lyric: a sort of sequel to 'Band On The Run' in which the
mercurial McCartney is still impatient to rush on to the next big thing in his
life, to escape the prisons he finds himself trapped with and to expand the
public's idea of who he is. In his personal life, too, this lyric has
significance: the Mills affair would have been more than enough to prevent most
celebrities from ever getting married or going out again, but already Paul -
desperate for a companion by his side - has committed to Nancy, flying in the
face of a public outcry that it was 'too soon', the same thing that greeted him
when he married Heather. Once again this album returns to it's favourite theme:
the last union wasn't right (the heavens greeted it with 'driving rain'), but
this time the 'heavens' (perhaps wife Linda) offers her blessing, with 'angels smiling'
because the couple's 'hearts' ring true. It makes for a fascinating if
heavy-going end to a fascinating if at times heavy-going album.
Or at least, that's nearly the end of the album, for
after a two minute pause (and starting at about the eight minute mark) in comes
a 'song' (actually more a collection of bleeping sounds') which, according to
the copyright information logged with the album's publishers MPL, is titled
'Road Trip'. The end of the road for Macca's adventurous side? Hopefully not,
although this little McCartney II style extra is perhaps the furthest out thing
on the record, perhaps a little too far down the road for all but Macca's
biggest fans.
Like McCartney and McCartney II there are a handful
of experiments too far to stop this album becoming a 100% McCartney classic
like the old days, but somehow even these small lapses in taste don’t alienate
the listener as they did on ‘Chaos and Creation In the Backyard’ and ‘Flaming
Pie’; they merely add to the home-made home-grown feel of the album as a
whole. When I was working for the
Runcorn Weekly News I ended my review for ‘Chaos’ by moaning at Macca for so
obviously sticking to his guns and not daring to stretch himself any more.
While ‘Electric Arguments’ certainly isn’t perfect and only really catches fire
intermittently, this album is exactly the sort of one I wanted Sir Paul to
make. Perhaps the best compliment of all – as long-term AAA fans will know – is
that this album reminds me of Brian Wilson’s ‘Smile’. The album’s detractors
will tell you that it’s fragmented, unfocussed and has nothing in the way of a
really ear-catching traditional melody-line. The album’s supporters will tell
you that they love this album for exactly the same reasons – you’re never quite
sure where it’s going to go next, but usually it will be something wonderful
and it still sounds like something running through this album (the nature
trying to get a 'message' though, the wilderness of being betrayed and between
wives, the theme of 'birds') just about in focus enough to tie the record
together. You wouldn’t want every album
in the ‘McCartney Collection’ to sound like this one, but having one or two records
this daring, exciting and unusual is fine by me. Let's hope the next Fireman
record comes out soon...
A NOW COMPLETE LIST
OF PAUL McCARTNEY ARTICLES TO READ AT ALAN’S ALBUM ARCHIVES:
'McCartney' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/news-views-and-music-issue-73-paul.html
'Ram' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-47-paul-and-linda-mccartney-ram.html
‘Wildlife’ (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/paul-mccartney-and-wings-wildlife-1972.html
'McCartney' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/news-views-and-music-issue-73-paul.html
'Ram' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-47-paul-and-linda-mccartney-ram.html
‘Wildlife’ (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/paul-mccartney-and-wings-wildlife-1972.html
‘Red Rose Speedway’ (1973)
http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/paul-mccartney-and-wings-red-rose_2844.html
'Band On The Run' (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/news-views-and-music-issue-87-paul.html
'Venus and Mars' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-64-paul-mccartney-and-wings.html
'Band On The Run' (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/news-views-and-music-issue-87-paul.html
'Venus and Mars' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-64-paul-mccartney-and-wings.html
'Wings At The Speed Of
Sound' (1976) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/paul-mccartney-and-wings-at-speed-of.html
'London Town' (1978) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-71-paul-mccartney-and-wings.html
'London Town' (1978) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-71-paul-mccartney-and-wings.html
'Back To The Egg' (1979) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/wings-back-to-egg-1979-revised-review.html
'McCartney II' (Original Double Album) (1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/news-views-and-music-issue-106-paul.html
'Tug Of War' (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/news-views-and-music-issue-122-paul.html
'McCartney II' (Original Double Album) (1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/news-views-and-music-issue-106-paul.html
'Tug Of War' (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/news-views-and-music-issue-122-paul.html
'Pipes Of Peace' (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/paul-mccartney-pipes-of-peace-1983.html
'Press To Play' (1986) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/88-paul-mccartney-press-to-play-1986.html
'Flowers In The Dirt' (1989) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/news-views-and-music-issue-40-paul.html
'Press To Play' (1986) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/88-paul-mccartney-press-to-play-1986.html
'Flowers In The Dirt' (1989) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/news-views-and-music-issue-40-paul.html
'Off The Ground' (1993) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/paul-mccartney-off-ground-1993.html
‘Flaming Pie’ (1997) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/paul-mccartney-flaming-pie-1997.html
'Driving Rain' (2001) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/paul-mccartney-driving-rain-2001.html
'Chaos and Creation In The
Back Yard' (2005) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.nl/2016/08/paul-mccartney-chaos-and-creation-in.html
'Memory Almost Full'
(2006) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/paul-mccartney-memory-almost-full-2006.html
'Electric Arguments' (as 'The Fireman') (2008) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/news-views-and-music-issue-13a-paul.html
'Kisses On The Bottom'(2012) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/news-views-and-music-issue-141-paul.html
'New' (2013) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2013/11/paul-mccartney-new-2013-album-review.html
‘Egypt Station’ (2018) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/09/paul-mccartney-egypt-station-2018.html
The Best Unreleased McCartney/Wings Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-best-unreleased-mccartney.html
Surviving TV and Film Footage http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/paul-mccartney-surviving-tv-appearances.html
Live/Wings Solo/Compilations/Classical
Albums Part One: 1967-1987
http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/paul-mccartney-and-bands.html
Live/Wings/Solo/Compilations/Classical/Unreleased
Albums Part Two: 1987-1997
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/paul-mccartney-and-bands_21.html
Live/Wings
Solo/Compilations/Classical Albums Part Three: 1997-2015
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/paul-mccartney-and-bands_28.html
Non-Album Recordings Part
One 1970-1984 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/paul-mccartneywings-non-album-songs.html
Non-Album Recordings Part
Two 1985-2015 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/paul-mccartney-non-album-songs-part-two.html
Essay: Not So Silly Love Songs https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/03/essay-paul-mccartneys-not-so-silly-love.html
Key Concerts and Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/05/paul-mccartney-five-landmark-concerts.html
Essay: Not So Silly Love Songs https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/03/essay-paul-mccartneys-not-so-silly-love.html
Key Concerts and Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/05/paul-mccartney-five-landmark-concerts.html
