Mac’s had quite a run of late, hasn’t he? Easily the most musically fruitful of the four Liverpool lads in the years since the split, nonetheless he never reached the heights of Lennon or Harrison during the 70s. He had several truly good songs, not a single truly good album. And considering the quantity of releases, it wasn’t always easy to have his back. Don’t get me wrong—he’ll always be loved and admired the world over—but during several stretches of his solo/Wings career, the question of whether or not he should have just faded away, made better use of his studio time or even flat-out retired should have come up often. But not long after George’s untimely passing, Paul seems to be as inspired and flourishing as he was back with the Beatles.
In 2005, Paul gave us Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, an album that I consider his all-time best post-Beatles effort. Teamed with producer Nigel Godrich (of Beck and Radiohead fame), it was high on spare, reflective songs with virtually none of the bombast, cheekiness, big ballads or syrupy pop shorts (and let’s not forget an absence of “silly love songs”). Then there was Memory Almost Full in 2007, the best Wings album that Wings never recorded; a step down from Chaos, but at least he was getting his 70s signature sound just right for nearly an entire long player. And now, via his Fireman collaboration with uber-producer Youth (aka, Martin Glover of Killing Joke fame), he delivers again.
Third overall, Electric Arguments is the first Fireman record in a decade and a considerable departure from the last two. The experimentalism can still be found, but the presence of McCartney is far more evident than ever before. The vocals, once rare and of the buried sample variety, rise to the front prominently, and no one can mistake Paul’s pipes for anyone else’s. And the electronic edge has been reduced—there is mechanical tinkering to be found, but this one harkens more to the late Beatles inspiration of psychedelia, mysticism and Middle Eastern harmonies—to say nothing for basic songwriting chops that inflect even the most labored melodies with a fresh spirit.
We begin with “Nothing Too Much out of Sight,” a fiery electric blues stomper stuffed with Zeppelin crunch and Jefferson Airplane acid-freakouts. Paul’s voice is all feral howling, a vocalizing companion piece to “Helter Skelter.” Stirring, passionate and confrontational, it’s about the last thing you’d have expected from the Fireman’s usual stable of ambient instrumentals. But then we move to the dustier and duskier “Two Magpies,” which shares a serene simplicity with “Blackbird” (the aviary symmetry helps the comparison, too). The first two tracks are bluesy, but couldn’t be further from each other in arrangement and execution. Continuing in the McCartney tradition, the next one is the melodramatic charmer, “Sing the Changes,” which, with the addition of a more prominent piano and cleaner vocal recording, might have fit in with Paul’s mid-70s/early-80s work. It’s a more traditional pop song lifted to dizzying highs, infused with Born to Run fist-pumping richness that woozily teeters between fireside and firestorm.
But after this, the album begins taking interesting detours. “Travelling Light” is a delicate winter journey, mashed up into something of a New Age waltz with Moody Blues dramatics. Pounding barroom rock appears with “Highway” courtesy of a bluesy harmonica and honky-tonk piano. Speakeasy gospel clomping and slovenly indolent jazz arrives with “Light from Your Lighthouse” (mandolin and all). There’s room for sweeping strings and church bells on the sonically dense, expansive drama of “Dance ‘Till We’re High.” “Lifelong Passion” borrows from “Tomorrow Never Knows,” slows it down a few measures and lets those loops wreak havoc on our senses while retaining the basic beauty. And “Is This Love?” ranks as a most unexpected album centerpiece, and certainly distant from the typical McCartney oeuvre—it’s a hymnal of sorts, halfway between tropical and pastoral, replete with trilling flutes and a multi-dimensional Paul choir.
The final stretch features the most unusual (if perhaps most unsuccessful) adventures. “Lovers in a Dream” reads like it ought to be a chirpy little pop ditty, but the results are anything but. It’s a dream, all right, but one of nightmarish drones, paranoid confusion, a pall of gothic clouds and a floor of psychedelic ambience. Clearly more the product of Youth than Mac, it’s not without merit if you can get past the grimy layer of baroque decadence. The echoing trance weirdness proceeds through “Universal Here, Everlasting Now,” before culminating with an electro-rigged dance pulse, vocal samples buried beneath reverb and closing with a somber piano melody not expected from the usual grand schmaltz ideology from Paul’s past. Then there’s prog pop on closer, “Don’t Sop Running,” with more backward loops, eerie atmospherics and disembodied melodrama. McCartney may claim he was the most experimental of the Beatles, but he’s better off at conservatism this time around. These songs (including the noisy hidden track throwaway) are worth hearing, but you likely won’t revisit them with the tenacity saved for the stronger pop songs.
But Youth’s influence has probably kept Mac’s more avant-garde instincts in check. The sort of goofy jokes and one-and-done throwaways that plagued albums like McCartney I & II, Venus and Mars, and Press to Play (among others) aren’t apparent. Some pieces don’t work, but they’re mixed into the good stuff so seamlessly that we hardly care (a couple of lumps in the mashed potatoes?). This album famously took thirteen days to record thirteen songs (spread out over the course of a year), but it has the aural splendor and musical complexity to suggest that each minute was well-spent. Mac’s admitted that some of his past failures arose out of a desire to just hurry into the studio, lay down a track that struck him just right at that moment, and move on. But this one sounds like a labor of love even if it required the minimum of studio effort. Whether or not you appreciate this new direction, you can’t claim that this is merely a minor diversion.
And as such, it’s easy to forget that this is a collaboration and not just another McCartney solo disc. The last two Fireman records could hardly be mistaken for Paul; this one not the same. Even lyrically-speaking, he still writes love songs, but instead of puppy love and lifelong dedication, he’s more desperate, confused and confrontational (I can only assume that Miss Mills caused this). But that change doesn’t affect the quality; it’s the success ratio even in the face of mess. Electric Arguments isn’t revelatory or groundbreaking, but even at more than an hour, there’s very few down moments across the entire album. Either Paul has found the cure for his inconsistency ailment or else Youth brings out the best in him. Let’s hope they return to the studio together again and again.
