Paul McCartney is a talented fellow no doubt and when he keeps to the melody harmony axis he has mined for half a century can still come up with the goods from time to time. And six years after the last time Paul recorded anything new worth bothering yourself over, the fair to middling Memory Almost Full is six years old, the Nirvana stuff sucked and the standards album was worse, he has done it again..
“New”, the title track of his October 174th release, is fair to middling. I am not sold on the bridge, but the chorus is pretty and the hook, , a handful of “ooooos”, is fabulous. And the way he elongates “all my life” seems to do a real neat trick he can’t always manage: it sounds deep and trivial: both at the same time.
But the bridge is so naff, the “we can do what we want, we can live how we choose” is just a drag. Has there even been a major rocker less comfortable with proselytizing? Remember “Give Ireland Back to The Irish”? How about “Freedom”, the man can’t lecture, he is too good natured.
And the lyric hurts the song and the song isn’t perfect, but it is immediately memorable, Mick Ronson does a very credible job of keeping the sound together -the man is betting at 1960s modern frills (pace Amy Winehouse), the harmonies are wonderful and it is has an implied density. It is so layered it feels heavy but it is McCartney so it also feels light and it reminds you of Paul without replicating himself.
Grade: B+