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Paul McCartney was the first of the Beatles to demonstrate that the whole of that band was greater than the sum of the parts. His solo album MCCARTNEY signaled the breakup of the group, the beginning of the end. McCartney and John Lennon were each able to reign in the excesses of the other, McCartney’s bombastic cutsiness vs. Lennon’s drug-addled, acid-drenched political excesses. For my part, I preferred Lennon’s solo edginess to McCartney’s fluff; if Lennon’s ROCK ‘N’ ROLL project seemed off-kilter, it was preferable to McCartney’s “Admiral Halsey” or “Band On The Run.”
I accordingly approached the news of a new McCartney project with some trepidation, especially considering that the guy is…well, approaching the big 6-0. Early reports were that it was an unexpected pleasure, and, unexpectedly, so it is. CHAOS & CREATION is light on chaos and heavy on creation. The over all spirit of the project seems more oriented toward simplicity; I have long held the theory that a good deal of McCartney’s work was overproduced to conceal the triteness and weakness of the material. Here, however, the material, deceptively simple for the most part, is some of the strongest work he has done since his mid-period Beatles’ work. On CHAOS & CREATION a good number of the tracks (“Friends To Go,” “Too Much Rain”) almost sound like demo tracks in their simplicity. “English Tea,” while more ambitiously arranged, is faintly reminiscent of REVOLVER’s “Eleanor Rigby,” not only in its use of a chamber group but also in its deceptively simple lyrics. Similarly, “Certain Softness” harkens back to “And I Love Her,” one of McCartney’s most popular Beatles’ era compositions, evoking the spirit of it without blatantly copying it. McCartney has always had the uncanny ability to create instantly familiar tunes; he appears, in the twilight of his career, to have remastered the concept of “less is more.”
McCartney, in a career of admitted superlatives, appears to have accomplished the unforeseen achievement of creating his best solo work to date. I never would have believed it possible, but there you are. If you’re looking for signs that the apocalypse is nigh then put this one on the list.
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Joe Hartlaub is in private law practice, specializing in entertainment law. He is the music editor for SavvyInsider.com
For a complete bio, click here.
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- zouhair