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| Memory Almost Full Hear Music Music •••½ Sound •••• |
Let's take a moment to mull that over. "Solo album." Hmmm. McCartney has been "solo" (with or without Wings) for almost 40 years now. Each time he releases a new record, should we really be calling it a solo album? Oh, wait: This is "the solo album worthy of his musical legacy." Hmmm. Memory Almost Full is his twenty-first record after the Beatles. Is the ad implying (or baldly claiming) that, finally, McCartney has made an album that comes to the Fab fore? Um, okay, if you say so — then please give me time to rid my collection of such unworthy albums as McCartney, Band on the Run, Tug of War, Flowers in the Dirt, and Flaming Pie.
If this review is starting to read like my previous review of McCartney — for 2005's Chaos and Creation in the Backyard — well, I figure I'm allowed, since the hullaboo surrounding Memory is exactly the same as the commotion for Chaos. That was the McCartney record, you may recall, that Time magazine said was "the first album in his post-Fab Four catalog that really matters." But no, the New York Times ad seems to be saying, this is the first one that really matters. Sigh. Can't poor Paul release an album that's unshackled by superlatives and absolutes? It would do us all well to remember what McCartney himself wrote in the liner notes for Flaming Pie, for example: "I wanted to have some fun and not sweat it. That's been the spirit of making this album. You've got to have a laugh, because it's just an album."
Or is it? A recent issue of Rolling Stone includes the following quote from producer David Kahne, recalling McCartney's ambitions for the new album: "He said he wanted it to compare to everything that he'd ever done. I said, 'Everything?,' and he said, 'Everything.' " Hmmm. Maybe that ad line was written by ... McCartney himself!
Okay, folks, let's get a little perspective here. Memory Almost Full isn't the only album worthy of this, the first album that really does that, or the only/first anything else. It is, quite simply, as my three-and-a-half-bullet rating translates, a very good Paul McCartney album. And considering that it was finished when he was 64 ... golly, who could ask for more?
Besides, it was a surprise to get more McCartney at all a mere 21 months after Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. But as we now know, the songs on that album and the new one are from the same general pool of material. In fact, McCartney began recording Memory first (with Kahne producing), in the fall of 2003. But he broke off those sessions to take advantage of the opportunity to work with producer Nigel Godrich. Instead of re-recording the tracks already in the can, McCartney left those alone and brought a separate batch to Godrich — resulting in the good but decidedly downcast Chaos. That done, McCartney called up Kahne again, resurrected the old tracks, and added some new ones for Memory. Even though the old tracks feature his live band and the new ones are all-Paul, everything sounds of a piece. And this piece is, as you may have guessed, full of memories.
That's because, instead of making a bitter divorce album, McCartney has opted to reminisce about the past. For him, it's an "Ever Present Past," as he remembers "the things I think I did when I was a kid," a time that "went by in a flash." But were those suburban skies always blue? "When was that summer when it never rained?," he asks in another song, before singing the challenge of its title: "You Tell Me." Most prominently, McCartney concludes with a five-song medley about old clothes, old teachers, and looking through a photo album of the scout camp, the school play, the bus stop, and yes, the Beatles — all before ending with his own epitaph.
McCartney has admitted that, by using a medley, he's taking another look back — to the groundbreaking medley that he and Beatles producer George Martin devised for Abbey Road. Yes, that one was built from miscellaneous snippets of tracks, whereas this one was planned and composed as a thematic group of fully realized songs. But if you're hoping that the very idea of a medley connotes a look back to a variety of Beatlesque (or at least McCartney-like) tunes, you'll happy to know that this is in fact the case for much of the whole album.
Memory opens with a disarmingly sweet mandolin — and Paul's comfy voice, up-close-and-personal in the sound mix — inviting everybody to "Dance Tonight," until some breezy electric guitars take us to that "Ever Present Past." Then comes his patented peripatetic bass on "See Your Sunshine," which leads to the Venus-and-Martian rock show of "Only Mama Knows." Yes, rock. Unlike last time out, McCartney lets loose on several tracks here, even summoning a Little bit of Richard. And there's more, including the delightfully skipping piano line of "Mr. Bellamy" and the suitably thrown-back rockabilly of "That Was Me."
This is the kind of material that helps make Memory a solid step up from the melancholy Chaos. Indeed, a simple track like "Dance Tonight" might seem like filler at first, but its direct charm isn't just McCartney-like — it's just like McCartney, his homemade gem from 1970. Too bad, then, that elsewhere Paul often makes things too busy, as if he's marking the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love by seasoning things with too much Pepper.
To wit: The chamber intro and outro for the hard-driving "Only Mama Knows" aren't just unnecessary but out of character. Also superfluous are the intro and coda to "Mr. Bellamy." Then there are the little abstract breaks in "Vintage Clothes" and the vocoder-like chorale in "Feet in the Clouds." It's all interesting but, at the same time, it's all too much — especially when McCartney sings in that last track: "But I find it very very very very very very hard / Yes I find it very very very very very very hard." Verily, verily, he says unto us!
Furthermore, whereas the Abbey Road medley included 8 songs clocking in at 16:14, the new medley takes almost exactly the same time — 16:22 — to cover only 5 songs. The main culprit here is the nearly 5-minute "House of Wax," which not only is too long for a medley number but also doesn't adhere to the theme of reminiscing. The 3-minute "You Tell Me," in both length and subject matter, would have been a better fit.
Something else keeps Memory a solid step down from Flaming Pie (still his late-period landmark). Several of the all-Paul tracks occasionally sound hermetic, lacking the natural ease of McCartney. This reaches an extreme in "Gratitude," a soul-style belter — and sure, he can still belt it, but the arrangement and the playing tend to plod. You need a band to do this kind of stuff. (Think ... the Beatles! Think ... "Oh! Darling.") And when McCartney's live band does come in for "Only Mama Knows" and most of the medley, it's a relief to hear how the performances open up. Even "House of Wax" comes alive with two ripping guitar solos by Paul himself.
The two-CD Deluxe Limited Edition of Memory neatly sums up a few of the album's negative/positive aspects. The busy packaging, which involves five big foldout panels of photos, is way too deluxe for its own good. But the second disc — in addition to having a decent, 25-minute, track-by-track audio commentary by Paul — offers three bonus tracks that should have been on the album proper. The instrumental "In Private" is another track straight outta McCartney, with amazing presence to the acoustic guitar and a beautiful stereo spread. "Why So Blue" is a gorgeous, deftly written ballad. And "222" is an experimental mood piece that allows Paul to stretch — even if he's reaching for the same ascending four-note figure of, yes, 90125's "Changes," vibes and all.
But the two best moments on Memory are the ones that wrap up the album itself. Whereas the Abbey Road medley concluded with "The End," the new one finishes with "The End of the End," as Paul — having taken stock of his life — looks to his death. With a piano accompaniment that harks back favorably to that of "Let It Be," McCartney sings some of the best lyrics he has written in decades:
On the day that I die,
I'd like jokes to be told,
and stories of old
to be rolled out like carpets
that children have played on
and laid on while listening
to stories of old.
On the day that I die,
I'd like bells to be rung,
and songs that were sung
to be hung out like blankets
that lovers have played on
and laid on while listening
to songs that were sung.
"No need to be sad," he also sings — but McCartney isn't about to leave us there, so whereas Abbey Road truly ended with "Her Majesty," this album ends with "Nod Your Head." It's a classic, nutty McCartney shout, and it beats the bejesus out of the deliberate "Gratitude." Alas, it's burdened by yet another unnecessary flourish — a big, heavy, "Live and Let Die" riff — but it still manages to stomp you silly.
So, yeah, it doesn't approach the overall excellence of Flaming Pie, but Memory Almost Full is indeed very good. Maybe even very very very very very very good. And for those of you who think I'm being tough, well, hell, this is Paul McCartney — and according to Kahne in Rolling Stone, he did ask for this kind of scrutiny, right? We should all be "tough" on him — we should all be the ones who could ask for more — because we still respect him as a musician. After all, he still is a musician, when so many of his contemporaries have fallen by the studio-side. And considering that, over the last 10 years, he's given us Pie, Chaos, and Memory (not counting the mostly dank Driving Rain, a forgivable misstep due to the death of his first wife), McCartney's musical legacy isn't just a thing of the past. It's ever present.
And another thing: You gotta love how the lyrics for "222" have Paul musing dreamily on four lines: "Look at that / Look at her walking / Turning my head / Taking my breath away." Some things never change, whether he's 64 or 17. And you know what I mean.
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