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many, many MANY reviews follow -
This Week's Hot Pick: Paul McCartney's 'Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard'
(Parlophone)
Former Beatle Paul McCartney may be the world's most successful songwriter, with an immense catalog of memorable hits, but the tunes on his latest CD don't add much bang to the hallowed McCartney songbook. Nor do they appear destined for lofty chart positions; few have that grow-on-you humability that could make them hit singles.
Nevertheless, fans looking for something weightier than the sunny optimism of past solo efforts will find the 63-year-old singer-songwriter in an intriguingly downcast state of mind on this 13-song disc, his 20th studio recording since the Beatles.
"Jenny Wren," a latter-day "Blackbird," is a heavy-hearted tune, and it's among the best on this quiet, reflective album. McCartney is surprisingly sour on "Riding to Vanity Fair" and there is a dark side to the seemingly sentimental, string-laden "English Tea." Storm clouds also hang over "At the Mercy" and "Too Much Rain."
McCartney worked with producer Nigel Godrich, known for his work with Beck, Radiohead and Travis. Godrich was a tough taskmaster who reportedly butted heads with the British superstar and forced him to rethink a number of tunes.
Godrich also dismissed McCartney's touring band, which had been recruited to back him in the studio. Consequently, McCartney played nearly every instrument himself, from the recorder on "Promise to You Girl" (one of the album's few upbeat songs) to more than a half dozen instruments on "Friends to Go": grand piano, drums, harpsichord, flugelhorn, tambourine and melodica.
The release of "Chaos and Creation" coincides with the kickoff of McCartney's 37-city "US" tour. It'll be interesting to see how McCartney and the band Godrich dismissed will present these songs on the hot-selling arena tour. (Gene Stout)
GRADE: B-
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/pop/24034
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Paul McCartney turns in some of his finest work
Associated Press
NEW YORK — It sounds cruel, but let's face it: Except for the occasional highlight like Vanilla Sky or My Brave Face, for the past 20 years, Paul McCartney's catalogue has been pretty barren.
So the former Beatle wanted to make his new solo album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, stand out.
"I decided to lay it on the line for myself and challenge myself and say, 'You're going to make a good album here.' It was a good motivator," he told The Associated Press.
Time magazine breathlessly declared Chaos to be McCartney's first album that matters since the Beatles broke up 35 years ago. But it's simply unlike anything he's done before, a quiet disc with complicated emotional shadings - the album that generations of critics who derided his sunny, silly love songs have been asking him to make.
He'll never be mistaken for Nine Inch Nails. But the heartache of Too Much Rain and smouldering anger of Riding to Vanity Fair are unusual for McCartney. When the 63-year-old struggles for the notes in the Blackbird successor Jenny Wren, he even sounds fragile.
"Even though I'm essentially an optimist, an enthusiast, like anyone else I have down moments in my life," he said. "You just can't help it. Life throws them at you.
"In the past I may have written tongue-in-cheek, like Maxwell's Silver Hammer, and dealt with matters of fate in a kind of comical, parody manner. It just so happens in this batch of songs I would look at these subjects and thought it was good for writing. If it's good enough to take to your psychiatrist, it's good enough to make a song of."
McCartney also was pushed by the blunt Nigel Godrich, a producer known for his work with Radiohead and Beck.
His method was to force the music legend out of his comfort zone. McCartney brought his touring band in to record; after two weeks Godrich dispatched them. Much like he did with his very first solo album, McCartney played virtually every instrument himself - on Friends to Go alone, he's credited on the grand piano, acoustic/bass/electric guitars, harpsichord, drums, tambourine, flugelhorn, melodica and shakers.
Producer and artist particularly clashed on Riding to Vanity Fair, which McCartney brought in as a fast song and Godrich kept trying to slow down.
"There were one or two moments on the album when I had to think to myself, 'You know, I could just fire this guy,"' McCartney said.
Widening his emotional palette doesn't necessarily belittle his optimism, McCartney said. He's not disowning anything. He spoke of talking with Bruce Springsteen a few years ago at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction where the Boss admitted he didn't really get Silly Love Songs at the time it came out in 1976. He feels differently now that he's a family man.
"It took a little nerve to hold on, knowing that people were going to take a cheap shot," McCartney said.
Obviously he never set out to log many years of lacklustre recordings.
"You're not really aware of that," he said. "You can maybe get a little complacent, or you're not hitting a good patch, or you can think it's great and it isn't. There are a multitude of reasons why."
For a man who seemingly tumbled out of bed every morning of his youth with a brilliant melody, the struggles were painful to listen to. Think Freedom. What was once effortless seemed forced.
Writing songs isn't necessarily harder for him as he gets older, McCartney said. And for whatever reasons - time, a happy remarriage and new fatherhood - he feels he's writing better than he has in a long time.
"I still have this deep love for melody in particular and writing songs," he said. "It isn't any more difficult. Obviously what made it easier then was writing with John (Lennon). He was such a great collaborator. The two of us were on fire every time we sat down to write.
"If he was stuck, I knew that I could help him out and vice versa. We normally sat down for three hours and bingo, a pretty good song came out. We never had a dry session. Every time we sat down, we came out with a song."
That happened up to the end; Lennon even asked for advice on The Ballad of John and Yoko, he said. "We're not stupid," McCartney said. "We knew a good thing."
Yet it put in place the essential dilemma of his solo years. McCartney seems to intrinsically understand the value of a strong collaborator, but what can compare when you've had a partnership for the ages?
He enjoyed, for example, a brief songwriting collaboration with Elvis Costello that produced some good music (My Brave Face). But "you do something like that and it makes it even more obvious that there's no replacing John for me and no replacing me for him."
McCartney spoke by telephone from a car driving to band rehearsals in Miami for his American tour. He's long past the period where he felt he had to prove himself post-Beatles so, twistedly, he avoided the band's work in concert.
Now the whole catalogue is up for grabs, and it's easy to find songs he's never played live before - like the voice-shredding Helter Skelter, which he brought out for the Live 8 concert.
One last query as the car pulled up: Has he ever thought over the years, I've put a pretty good songbook together, maybe it's just time to let it be?
"Pardon the pun," he said. "The trouble is, I like it too much. If I was asked to retire tomorrow, if I was forcibly removed from my contract, I'd just do it for fun."
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/s
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EW review: McCartney good, not great
By Tom Sinclair
Entertainment Weekly
Tuesday, September 13, 2005; Posted: 10:55 a.m. EDT (14:55 GMT)
(Entertainment Weekly) -- Boy, incipient senior citizenhood certainly is turning out differently for Paul McCartney than he -- or we -- once thought.
Way back in the Summer of Love, when he was in his mid-20s, the cute Beatle sang a cute ditty called "When I'm 64," which imagined what life might be like at such an imponderably advanced age. "Doing the garden/ Digging the weeds/Who could ask for more?" he wondered.
McCartney is now 63. He has just released a new CD, "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard." It's unclear whether that title is some sort of allusion to the above lyrics (garden = backyard -- get it?), but the album itself is clearly modeled after 1970's "McCartney," his first post-Beatles solo effort.
As he did on that earlier disc, McCartney plays virtually all the instruments (excluding the strings), overdubbing everything from flugelhorns and harpsichords to drums and synthesizers. Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck) served as producer, but apparently kept any overly arty ideas to himself. The uncluttered sound is classic, immaculate Macca: "Very twee/Very me," as he sings on the bucolic "English Tea."
There's no question that in places, it's a tad too twee. But what we're hearing is an artist honestly following his muse -- always a compelling event.
While his peers the Rolling Stones are currently trying to live up to their hoary rep as the (alleged) greatest rock & roll band in the world, our man is quite content to get in touch with his kinder, gentler side, composing quiet little hymns with titles like "A Certain Softness" and "Friends to Go" (the latter is a touching homage to George Harrison, who, tragically, didn't live to see 63).
Every once in a while he turns the heat up, as on the bouncy Motown pastiche "Promise to You, Girl," but you're far more likely to play "Backyard" on a Sunday morning than on a Saturday night.
Naysayers may carp that this is an old man's album; we posit that it's the work of an old soul -- something this Liverpudlian seems always to have been. McCartney has said that two especially introspective tracks, "Jenny Wren" and "English Tea," were partially inspired by his love for Charles Dickens. He also admits that "Too Much Rain" is a sideways rewrite of Charlie Chaplin's chestnut "Smile."
We suggest that if you have trouble relating to songs indebted to those two pre-rock & roll Charlies you seek out "Run, Devil, Run," McCartney's abundantly raucous 1999 set. And if you're misguided enough to think that any song that evokes the mood of "Yesterday" or "Michelle" is pabulum by definition -- well, there's no hope for you.
Personal to Sir Paul: When you actually do turn 64 next June 18, why not release an update of "When I'm 64"? You could call it "Now I'm 64!" and pen some wry new lyrics: "Doing a record/Digging myself/Who could ask for more?" It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, mate. Don't sleep on it.
EW Grade: B
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/0
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McCartney creates order out of 'Chaos' By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY
Tue Sep 13, 6:22 AM ET
Recording his first studio album in four years, Paul McCartney got by with a little help from his friends - an old one and a new one.
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George Martin, McCartney's longtime buddy and legendary producer of The Beatles, suggested that he enter the studio with latter-day boardsman Nigel Godrich, whose clients include rock darlings such as Radiohead and Beck.
The resulting CD, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, which arrives Tuesday, finds the 63-year-old artist spreading his wings without forsaking his roots.
"This is not Smack My Bitch Up- let's get that straight," McCartney quips, referring to 1997's controversial Prodigy single. Certainly, the soaring melodies and searching lyrics on Chaos don't challenge McCartney's standing as a purveyor of warm, shiny pop. But the new songs and arrangements - for which McCartney played most of the instruments, as diverse as guitar, bass and drums and harmonium and flugelhorn - feature darker and edgier nuances. And they weren't conceived without labor pains.
"There was a tension with Nigel," McCartney concedes. "But it turned out to be a good thing. After we had gone through the whole process, from tension to argument to making up and building a friendship because of it, there was the feeling that each of us had a character, and we were beginning to respect that in each other. I thought, 'OK, he's got his opinion, and he's not scared of me; and I've got my opinion, and I'm not going to be intimidated by him.' "
The dynamic with Godrich would, in fact, give McCartney a sense of déjà vu. "I remember thinking back to The Beatles years. I tend to remember them as glorious and golden, but there were a lot of arguments in the studio. Often I would think, 'This guy John Lennon doesn't know what he's talking about,' or whatever. Or he would think the same thing about me. Making any good creative thing can't just be all sunshine. There are moments where you have to work things out, but if you get through them, they can add a lot to the picture."
McCartney cites a poignant track on Chaos called Riding to Vanity Fair. "Man, it went through so many changes, so many disagreements. It started out as a perky, upbeat song and became something darker and more meaningful."
Not that he wants to switch. "After all these years, I've come to feel a sense of responsibility, not in a bad way but in a very good way, to the people who come up to me on the street and say, 'I was feeling bad, and your music, this certain song, really made me feel better.' I go, 'Wow, yeah.' That's really great to have that effect on people."
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto
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McCartney shows fabulous form in 'Chaos'
By JEFF MIERS
News Pop Music Critic
9/13/2005
Associated Press
Paul McCartney's "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" hits the stores today.
Associated Press
Paul McCartney's brilliance shines through on "Chaos and Creation In the Backyard."
Paul McCartney
Chaos and Creation In the Backyard
(Capitol)
It's not exactly like Paul McCartney has been slumming it since the Beatles collapsed 35 years ago. Of all the former Fabs, McCartney has been the most prolific and, with a few exceptions, the most consistent as a solo artist.
Still, as well-crafted as McCartney's work has been since his peak solo years in the mid-'70s, there has always been the nagging feeling that something was missing. McCartney has a way with a melody, clearly, and even when he seemed to be coasting, his work stood above that of most of his contemporaries. But the attention to detail, the glorious production nuances, the beauty of the richly layered arrangements of his Beatles-era work - those seemed to have gone largely missing.
"Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," released today, solves this problem. It's full of ornate melodic and harmonic detail, clever twists of plot, unexpected chord progressions and hip, timeless production tendencies. "Chaos" is the sound of the world's most famous rock musician challenging both himself and his audience, most of whom seem quite content to pay hundreds of dollars just to hear the man play the oldies. At 62, however, McCartney has seen fit to push forward with the seeming delight of a 20-year-old discovering music for the first time.
The catalyst for this change - and it should be noted that it's a subtle change, since McCartney's two most recent albums, "Driving Rain" and "Flaming Pie," had moments that shimmered with the clarity of genius - is Nigel Godrich, who makes his debut as McCartney's producer following groundbreaking work with Radiohead and Beck.
The story, already widely circulated and in danger of devolving into myth, goes something like this: Godrich started working with McCartney, decided that some of the material was weak, had no trouble telling his new boss as much and eventually convinced him to sideline his stellar touring band and play all of the instruments himself, a la much of the brilliant "McCartney," "Ram" and "McCartney II" albums. Macca swallowed his pride and got on with it.
We should all thank Godrich; his refusal to let McCartney slip into his comfort zone makes "Chaos" one of his finest solo albums.
The album begins with "Fine Line," a jubilant piece of sunny, piano-based pop, a tune that wouldn't have been out of place on "Flaming Pie," an easygoing collection of bright, catchy tunes. But listen deeper, and you hear plenty more going on here, from McCartney's layered acoustic and electric guitars and jaunty piano, to the Millenia Ensemble's airy string arrangement, conducted by Joby Talbot. It's crystalline chamber pop, but it's not shallow, throwaway stuff.
"How Kind of You" is an elegant ballad of gratitude, its lyrics abandoning artifice in favor of a direct expression of thanks. Again, the richness of the arrangement is striking. McCartney handles guitars, bass, piano, drums, flugelhorn and guerrero here, and the tune's somber melodic construction seems to float atop the nuanced blend of instruments.
"Jenny Wren" is a gorgeous tune, akin to McCartney's "Blackbird"/"Mother Nature's Son"/"Calico Skies" style of finger-picked acoustic guitar composition. The chord changes and melody are ably suited to the singer's moving portrait of an unvanquished spirit and the hope for a day "when this broken world mends its foolish ways." Again, it's in the meeting of melody, composition and lyric that this sort of thing takes wing.
McCartney has long been accused of being a softie, a sap, a silly romantic. He is one, clearly. But his relative optimism has been balanced by an ability to view its inverse while still retaining some sort of hopefulness. It's a gift, and he delivers it tous as one, scoff as many might.
"Riding to Vanity Fair" is as dark as McCartney gets, over a brilliant pastiche of swelling strings, toy glockenspiel and electric piano, McCartney rids himself of someone whose ego prevented true friendship from flourishing. It's a striking lyric and helps balance some of its companions on the album, which delightfully fall into the silly love songs category. It's here that we see the Godrich/McCartney relationship flourish. The tune has the bummed-out beauty of Beck's "Sea Change" record, another Godrich production that made pain seem somehow inspiring.
"Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" is an incredibly strong record that demands of the listener some serious attention. It's in the details that much of McCartney's brilliance shines through, today as it did way back when he was Fab.
e-mail: jmiers@buffnews.com
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20
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McCartney goes deep, divinely
He had fellow Beatles on his mind as he wrote
By Steve Morse, Globe Staff | September 13, 2005
Paul McCartney doesn't keep score. He has no clue that his new album, ''Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," in stores today, is his 20th studio record since his Beatles days.
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Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts ''I just kind of do it. I don't count," McCartney says. ''Other people get into it, but I'm not a stats man."
What he is, this time around, is a multi-instrumentalist -- and a reflective one at that. The new album, produced by Nigel Godrich (who has worked with Radiohead and Beck), features McCartney playing up to 10 instruments on a single song. While a few tunes have a chirpy pop bounce, there is a relative lack of the ''silly love songs" (as McCartney referred to them years ago) he's been known to pen. The album's bittersweet tone is, in part, Godrich's doing.
''I might have gone toward my natural optimism if he wasn't there," says McCartney, who opted to work with the producer after a recommendation from Beatles producer George Martin.
The results are extremely gratifying, as McCartney digs deeper than he has in years, peering, at times, into the darkness. On ''At the Mercy," McCartney wistfully confesses, ''I guess you'd rather see me grow into a better man than the one you know." The experimental ''Riding to Vanity Fair" is a quasi bossa nova blending toy glockenspiel and strings, with McCartney dreamily singing, ''I was open to friendship but you didn't seem to have any to spare while you were riding to Vanity Fair."
''I wasn't talking to anyone particular there, but about lots of people I had met during my life," he explains. ''When I first brought that song in, it was a different beast altogether. It was faster and more staccato. It didn't have as good a melody and the words weren't as good. We halved the tempo, and it was very much a collaboration between myself and Nigel."
McCartney, who headlines the TD Banknorth Garden on Sept. 26 and 27, intended to use his touring band on the album, but Godrich asked him to make it more personal by playing most instruments himself.
''I could see the direction he wanted to go," McCartney says. ''And he knew how to layer things. He'd say, 'I just need a certain color here.' And I'd say, 'What, an organ or something?' Then he'd say, 'No, have you got a flugelhorn?' And I'm thinking, 'Oh my God, what is he on?' But sure, I got the flugelhorn out and we oiled it up and got the valves working and I would maybe just play a single note on it for the song. So the more you hear the album, the more you can hear little colors like that, little subtle touches."
The song ''Friends to Go" was inspired by George Harrison. ''On that one I very much referred to George, so much so that I almost felt that George was writing it. There was a certain melody and chord changes that for some reason reminded me of George. . . . And lyrically, too. Listen to it and imagine George's voice singing, 'I've been sliding down a slippery slope / I've been climbing up a slowly burning rope but the flame is getting low.' I could see George having written that."
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Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts Harrison isn't the only late Beatle who's influenced the album, McCartney says.
''I do refer in my mind to John [Lennon]," he says. ''If your parents passed away, you might still think, 'Well, what would my dad think of this?' Or, 'What would my mom have thought?' In my case, because I write, the natural person I would refer to in my mind would be John. . . . I don't do it all of the time, but often I can be just thinking about a song and go back to how John and I would have dealt with it."
For his tour, which begins Friday, McCartney has lined up two corporate sponsors to defray production costs: Fidelity Investments and Lexus.
''The difficulty for me is getting involved with a good sponsor that I can be proud of," McCartney says. ''We don't really know [Fidelity] over in England, but my promoter for the tour said they're really great. . . . It has to be something that I believe in." As for Lexus, he says, ''I'm getting involved with their new hybrid [car] . . . and I was told that all of Lexus's cars are going to be hybrids in the next 10 years."
McCartney is 63 and has toured more in the past few years than he has for a couple of decades. He says that it's partly because he loves his band -- and that he has again fallen in love with his work. Expect no farewell tour yet.
''Are you kidding? I'm not giving this up," he says. ''They're going to have to pull me out screaming. People say to me, 'Why do you do it? You've written enough songs.' But I say, 'I know I have, but it's my hobby and I'm lucky enough to get to do my job as a hobby.' "
http://www.boston.com/ae/music/cd_revie
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McCartney's casual brilliance shines on
By Greg Kot
Tribune music critic
Published September 13, 2005
Paul McCartney gives the impression that he could fall out of bed and dash off an album's worth of songs in a matter of hours.
Trouble is, much of his post-Beatles work is just as easy to dismiss; McCartney has turned breeziness into a genre all his own.
But the singer's casual genius is more focused than usual on his 20th studio recording as a solo artist, "Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard" (Capitol), due in stores Tuesday. Designed to evoke the intimate, one-man-band feel of "McCartney," his 1970 solo debut, and "McCartney II," its 1980 successor, it's much better than either of those albums.
Though most of the 13 songs are ballads and smaller mood pieces, only a couple sound trivial. The arrangements are richer, the melodies more nuanced than anything the singer has done in years. McCartney plays most of the instruments himself; he's a brilliant bassist, of course, and an accomplished pianist and guitarist. But he also does a passable impression of a self-contained orchestra while playing drums, tambourine, melodica, recorder, flute, harmonium, even a flugelhorn.
At their best, these layered arrangements conspire to create finely tuned chamber pop, augmented by subtly appropriate string arrangements. In its scope and tone -- songs about heartache, forgiveness and redemption -- "Chaos and Creation" echoes the more personal work of one of McCartney's heroes, Brian Wilson. That McCartney was motivated not just to write and perform the songs, but to refine them until they merited comparison to his best work, is the key to the album's sense of accomplishment. Credit should be shared by producer Nigel Godrich, whose resume includes albums by Radiohead, Pavement and Beck.
It's doubtful McCartney has heard the word "no" much in a recording studio since his days in the Beatles, when John Lennon and producer George Martin acted as bad cop-good cop quality-control monitors. But in recent interviews, McCartney has said Godrich wasn't intimidated into silence, and didn't mind telling the legend when his work was less than legendary. The craftsmanship and attention to detail are evident: the way McCartney's piano and a string section drive "Fine Line" before dissolving into a dreamy bridge; the two recurring notes on a toy glockenspiel that become a beacon in the troubled waters of "Riding to Vanity Fair"; the wordless vocal that floats alongside the mournful melody of a duduk (an Armenian clarinet) on the acoustic reverie "Jenny Wren."
There are a couple of slip-ups. The preciousness of "English Tea" is caustic, with McCartney celebrating effete upper-crust rituals without apparent irony. And "Certain Softness" is a bossa nova that verges on lounge parody.
Otherwise, a bittersweet melancholy hangs over most of the songs, and the singer is in supple voice. Even when he slides up to a falsetto, McCartney's delivery sounds conversational. If his emotional engagement has been suspect in the past, buried beneath a veneer of can-do optimism and banal lyricism, McCartney lets his guard down a little here. He's just turned 63, and that knowledge shades the songs in autumnal colors. A line as simple as "no more rain" sends chills, and the song "Too Much Rain" becomes a hymn to deliverance.
His performance on "How Kind of You" is equally moving, especially the way his voice quivers the first time he delivers the line, "I thought my faith had gone."
Even some of his fans might've felt the same way in recent decades. Now McCartney's given them reason to believe again.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertain
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McCartney's 'Chaos' won't make fans forget solo debut
September 13, 2005
BY JIM DEROGATIS Pop Music Critic Advertisement
On the cover of Paul McCartney's 20th studio solo album, one of the most influential artists of his generation appears -- right below the corporate tie-in promotional sticker offering a chance to win a luxury automobile -- as a sensitive, artistic 20-year-old pensively strumming an acoustic guitar in his mum's backyard. More than four decades later and a year short of turning 64, Macca is in a nostalgic mood on "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," his first new disc in four years, which arrives in stores today.
He breaks no new ground, and he doesn't come anywhere close to the best moments from his storied past. But at least he's done a better job of crafting appealing faux-McCartney than the Rolling Stones did while trying to deliver ersatz Stones on "A Bigger Bang."
McCartney clearly has been inspired by his new love (second wife Heather Mills), his new daughter (Beatrice, born in 2003) and his new band of gutsy young musicians, with whom he's resumed a fairly busy touring schedule. (He returns to Chicago to perform at the United Center on Oct. 18-19.)
CD REVIEW
PAUL MCCARTNEY
'CHAOS AND CREATION IN THE BACKYARD'/ ***
Unfortunately, Macca played most of the instruments himself, leaving the band at home. (His fantastic drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. appears on one track, and former Jellyfish guitarist Jason Falkner contributes to a few others.) This lends a sense of airless isolation -- the exact opposite of what this star needs at this point. But he'd like us to think of these 13 songs as the long-overdue sequel to his stripped-down 1970 solo bow "McCartney." (And forget about 1980's "McCartney II," because no one should ever have to listen to "Coming Up" again.)
Alas, there is nothing here as exquisitely perfect as "Maybe I'm Amazed" or "Every Night," while there are several tunes as saccharine and dreadful as "Lovely Linda." In "How Kind of You," over a grand piano and flugelhorn produced by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck, Travis), McCartney croons, "I thought I'd never find/A someone quite as kind as you." Gee, Paul, we all felt your loss with Linda's death in 1998, but during your brief bachelorhood, was it really that difficult to get a date?
In addition to rising above such Hallmark card banalities, McCartney's biggest problem for the last 45 years has been distinguishing his best ideas from his worst. He's been complaining in the handful of interviews he's granted about what a hard time Godrich gave him, challenging him in the studio. But if you ask me, the producer didn't push him hard enough.
While "English Tea" attempts to capture a sort of pastoral "Penny Lane" vibe, it winds up being just unbearably twee. "A Certain Softness" returns to McCartney's beloved 1930s Rudy Vallee kitsch, which is never a good thing. And "Riding to Vanity Fair" tries to incorporate some of the ambient weirdness of 1994's "Strawberries, Oceans, Ships, Forest," but ends up tuneless and plodding.
On the bright side, the good moments are much better than anything Sir Paul has given us since his fiery roots-rock cover album in 1999, "Run Devil Run." Or, if we're talking about originals, since Wings.
The opening "Fine Line" has the sort of irresistible bounciness that made us love McCartney in the first place. "Jenny Wren" effectively revisits the finger-picking beauty of "Blackbird" and "Mother Nature's Sun." On "Friends to Go," Paul channels his mate George Harrison, musically if not lyrically, while the majestic "Promise to You Girl" shifts between "Sgt. Pepper's"-style orchestral ponderings and a rambunctious, up-tempo Britpop take on Motown, a la "Got to Get You Into My Life."
But the coolest bits come in the form of a hidden track at the end of the disc comprising three unrelated musical snippets. Recorded as a lark, these find Macca casually tossing off a dozen melodies that other bands would kill for, while bashing away with the reckless glee of that twentysomething in the backyard who appears on the cover.
This a reminder of the incredible talent McCartney still possesses, as well as something that makes you wish he had allowed himself to be challenged here -- either by his new band or by a producer he'd actually listen to -- and recorded in a fast and dirty way for real, instead of merely talking about it.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/entertai
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Maybe I'm amazed: McCartney's latest soars
By Sean Piccoli
Pop Music Writer
Posted September 13 2005
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Paul McCartney has adopted what sounds like a minor-key frame of mind on his new album, Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard (Virgin). The change in temperament surprises, coming from one of the more blithe Beatles, and it wreaks a welcome havoc on songwriting habits that McCartney had developed through decades of stubborn good cheer.
Chaos never sounds self-consciously dark. What McCartney has done instead -- probably with some nudging by producer Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Travis) -- is to let darker sentiments mingle with the expressions of love and happiness. The effect is liberating: In opening the music up to sadness, uncertainty and a bit of vertigo, McCartney has turned out a solo album that stands with his best post-Beatles work from the 1970s.
The album opens with a striking example of this more adventurous approach: Fine Line, a stride-piano song that turns faintly surreal as the instrumental layers pile up. The song beckons -- "Come home brother/All is forgiven" -- with a mix of giddiness and melancholy that recalls not just the Beatles and Band on the Run-era McCartney but Brian Wilson at his playful best.
Conversely, the album's saddest songs, At the Mercy and Riding to Vanity Fair, never sink into a pit of contemplation. McCartney and producer Godrich keep them aloft with intriguing changes of melody and arrangements that sparkle without resorting to circus-like dazzle. McCartney has a blast emptying the attic of instruments and, with few exceptions, playing all of them himself. Spinet, flugelhorn, melodica, harpsichord, tubular bells, toy glockenspiel and harmonium, among other novelties, work in concert with the standbys -- guitar, piano, bass, drums and McCartney's still-youthful voice.
He is just as effective paring back to simply guitar, vocals and percussion on the plaintive Jenny Wren. McCartney employs varied textures all over the album, but none -- not even the bossa-nova trifle, A Certain Softness -- feels beyond his reach.
Of all the 13 songs (plus one hidden instrumental track of mad science in the studio) only Follow Me verges on the greeting-card poetry for which critics have flayed McCartney in the past: "You give me a reason to face every day." But the melody is unassailably crisp and the music has a way of deepening the sentiment. The album closes with Anyway, a more straightforward plea for love and understanding, sweetly reminiscent of John Hiatt's Have a Little Faith in Me. Here's an album to restore faith in McCartney.
Sean Piccoli can be reached at spiccoli@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4832.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/li
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McCartney Gets Back, but Not for Nostalgia
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By JON PARELES
Published: September 12, 2005
There's a struggle on Paul McCartney's new album, "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," and it's one that pays off. On one side is Sir Paul's gift for easy, bubbly melody - tunes that are so shapely that in the past he has often settled for finishing them as harmless little ditties. On the other side is his urge to experiment with sounds and structures and to recognize some darker thoughts - a smaller, but still significant part of his song catalog. For this album, on Capitol, Sir Paul chose a producer who favored the experimental side: Nigel Godrich, who has worked with Radiohead and Beck. Sir Paul also lined up his best backup band since the Beatles: himself.
Except for some string-section arrangements, he plays nearly every instrument on the album. That's something he hasn't done to this extent since he made his first solo album, "McCartney," back in 1970, and it makes the songs more intimate and less conventional. In talking about the album, Sir Paul has said that Mr. Godrich pushed him to deepen the songs, and he followed the advice. "How Kind of You" could have been a simple thank-you note, but the music transforms it. Sir Paul sets it to keyboards - reedy harmonium chords and overlapping stereo piano ripples - that make it eerie and insecure, bringing out lines like "I thought that I was lost."
At 63 he no longer has the voice of a young man, or the unalloyed optimism. "This Never Happened Before" pulls vows of love out of negations like the title. "Riding to Vanity Fair" is one of the most pensive songs he has ever recorded: a wounded response to a rejected friendship, with strings tugging downward as an undertow.
"At the Mercy" uses its harmonies to seesaw between uncertainty and determination; the melody starts by leaping down a tritone, an unusual choice, and the chords keep turning minor and diminished while the lyrics confess, "Sometimes I'd rather run and hide/ Than stay and face the fear inside." Sir Paul has always been an instinctive songwriter, and he sounds as surprised by these songs as his listeners may be.
There are unabashed echoes of the Beatles all over the album, like the "Lady Madonna" piano bounce of "Fine Line," the "Blackbird" acoustic guitars of "Jenny Wren," or the "Golden Slumbers" expansiveness of "Anyway," which begs for a simple phone call. Yet if anyone is entitled to draw on the Beatles, Sir Paul is. On "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," he doesn't use the Beatles touches for easy nostalgia. They're the foundation of a musical identity that's not content, this time, with silly love songs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/12/a
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'Chaos': Pop without the cute
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY
Paul McCartney's Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (* * * out of four) recalls some early solo work, particularly McCartney and Ram. But this time, the Cute Beatle plays it less cute.
The album's mood and sound may be "very twee, very me," as he sings on English Tea, yet a darker-than-usual tone saturates the intimate, pretty and (naturally) Beatlesesque pop tunes here. In Riding to Vanity Fair, there's even a squirt of bile, an ingredient McCartney has regarded as kryptonite since he and John Lennon split.
Produced with elegance and efficiency by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead), Chaos finds McCartney playing all instruments except strings. He was inspired by Dickens and pastoral England, along with his usual themes of benevolence and love, though there's less of the puppy variety. Some tunes are sugary and tame; others, especially the gorgeous Too Much Rain and Blackbird knockoff Jenny Wren, are reminders that McCartney's relevance extends past Yesterday.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/revi
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Paul McCartney: 'Chaos and Creation in the Backyard'
By Kevin Johnson
Of the Post-Dispatch
09/13/2005
Paul McCartney
"Chaos and Creation in the Backyard"
Grade: A
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Paul McCartney's not necessarily obliged to make great albums at this point in his career. After all that McCartney has given the world musically, from the Beatles to Wings and his solo career, he's certainly allowed to coast a bit in the manner of fellow Brits Rod Stewart and Elton John. But that's not the choice Sir Paul makes on his new CD, "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard." On his 20th studio album - and his first since 2001's million-selling "Driving Rain" - McCartney remains as vital as ever.
"Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" is touted as a back-to-basics effort, and a scan of the CD's credits reveals McCartney everywhere, playing bass, electric and acoustic guitars, drums, grand and upright pianos, cello and B3 organ. If that's not impressive enough, he's also on board for the harpsichord, shakers, tubular bells, maracas, triangle, cymbal, toy glockenspiel and flugelhorn. He's not been this involved musically since 1970's "McCartney."
Did we mention he sings as well? The 63-year-old's vocals holdup admirably - just listen to him on "This Never Happened Before," for example.
McCartney, who mastered the creation of perfect pop tunes decades ago, continues that tradition with a memorable batch of mostly piano- and acoustic guitar-driven tunes. Credit should also go to McCartney's wise choice of producer Nigel Godrich of Radiohead and Beck fame.
McCartney refers to the quietly gorgeous "Jenny Wren" as the "daughter of 'Blackbird.'" Piano ballad "Anyway" feels as familiar as anything McCartney has ever done. The plush and orchestral "English Tea" nearly bursts with music. "A Certain Softness" features just the right amount of tropical breeze. And the joys found on the Charlie Chaplin-inspired "Too Much Rain" and "Friends to Go," which nods to George Harrison, are too numerous to mention,
In addition to the CD's 13 official songs, McCartney provides a "hidden track." The noisy, somewhat experimental instrumental track appears at the end of the disc but was originally intended to precede the first song. It was probably best left hidden.
But for most of "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," McCartney shows he's still capable of far more than "Silly Love Songs."
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entert
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Paul McCartney, Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard
Paul McCartney has grown bitter - and it's done him a world of good, says Alexis Petridis
, (Parlophone)
Friday September 9, 2005
The Guardian
Buy Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard now
For a moment, let us banish the nagging suspicion that the world may house people more deserving of our sympathy than a happily married knight of the realm, globally acknowledged as a peerless genius and with a rumoured personal fortune of £762m, and spare a thought for Paul McCartney. Despite his reputation for irrepressible chirpiness - the man who, for a generation of 1980s Smash Hits readers, will always be Fab Macca Wacky Thumbs Aloft - it can't be easy being him at 63. Your best work was completed four decades ago. The hits have dried up (his last top 10 single was in 1987). Every new effort is greeted with little more than a yawn, a shrug and at least one twerpish critic bringing up the subject of The Frog Chorus: even a wildly successful world tour couldn't hoist 2001's Driving Rain higher than number 46.
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Obviously the unimaginable wealth, rapturous reception at Glastonbury and Live8 and official title as the Most Successful Songwriter in the History of Popular Music must make life a smidge easier, but none of it answers the question: now what? Over the past 20 years, he has tried virtually everything, embarking on projects that presumably whiled away the time between world tours pleasantly enough, but that only the bona fide nutjobs would listen to twice: ambient techno, classical music, old rock'n'roll covers, fitful attempts to reignite the spark with new collaborators, even a compilation of his late wife Linda's musical efforts.
On first glance, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard looks like more dabbling. It teams McCartney up with Nigel Godrich, the modish producer of Radiohead, Beck and, perhaps less laudably, Band Aid 20's Do They Know It's Christmas? In interviews, McCartney has made the sessions sound hard work: "painful", "a plunge into the darkness" and "like being pulled through a hedge backwards". Godrich first dismissed McCartney's idea to make an Indian-themed album, then dismissed his backing band, then started dismissing his songs.
The largely one-man-band results resemble the more ramshackle albums from the first decade of McCartney's post-Beatles career: McCartney, Ram, 1980's McCartney II. But those albums were sunlit, quirky and marked by a daffy, occasionally grating sense of humour. Chaos and Creation in the Backyard is muted and crepuscular. Godrich's measured, dry production means that even the love songs seem strangely downbeat: the chirpy Promise to You Girl sounds as out of place here as a burst of Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da at a funeral.
Some of the sessions' tension has seeped into the songs, with surprising results. At the Mercy sounds bewildered and despairing. Riding to Vanity Fair is notable not only for a glorious chorus that rises from the song's murky strings and minor chords in a way that is so inimitably, ridiculously McCartney-esque, you can virtually feel your thumbs involuntarily twitching aloft, but also because it offers a previously unheard noise: Paul McCartney sounding bitter. It's an emotion he has previously avoided, presumably because he spent his golden years collaborating with a songwriter who could do vicious, sneering, bug-eyed bitterness better than anyone. Even when Lennon turned his sights on him - on How Do You Sleep?, an early draft of which tactfully labelled McCartney a "cunt" - he never responded in kind, preferring the bemused, disappointed shrug of Dear Friend and Let Me Roll It. But someone has clearly riled him in a way that Lennon could not. Peppered with withering "apparently"s and "I wouldn't dare to presume"s, Riding to Vanity Fare takes McCartney, emotionally at least, into new territory. It's all rather bracing.
Not all the album's pleasures are so unexpected. It does a brisk and highly enjoyable trade in Beatles references. English Tea offers a string arrangement that is one part Eleanor Rigby to two parts Martha My Dear and a witty lyrical nod to the author's saccharine public image ("very twee," he notes, "very me"). Friends to Go has a distinct Two of Us swing. A charming bit of Latin-inflected fluff called A Certain Softness recalls Step Inside Love, the charming bit of Latin-inflected fluff he wrote for Cilla Black in the mid-1960s. The delightful Jenny Wren could no more obviously signpost its links to The White Album's Blackbird if it were called Listen to This, It Sounds a Bit Like Blackbird off The White Album.
For all the nods to the past, not a note of Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard comes close to Beatle standards: it's an intriguing diversion rather than a major addition to the canon. What it has is a sense of purpose, lovely tunes in abundance, and charm. It mints an unassuming and idiosyncratic style with which McCartney could see out his career. At last, it seems he's found an answer to the previously imponderable question: now what?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayre
