Paul McCartney

McCartney III (2020)

 

 1. Long Tailed Winter Bird
 2. Find My Way
 3. Pretty Ways
 4. Women and Wives
 5. Lavatory Lil
 6. Deep Deep Feeling
 7. Slidin'
 8. The Kiss of Venus
 9. Seize the Day
 10.Deep Down
 11.Winter Bird / When Winter Comes
  
  
  

Called "III" because this was McCartney's third album where he played almost all of the instruments himself. That's a feat that should always serve as a strong testimony for one's talent. To be honest, though, such an endeavor doesn't necessarily translate to great songs nor a great album. Although, such an award might not have really been the goal of McCartney as he set out to make this thing anyway.

Although he's had masses of well known songs and/or hits as a solo artist, much of Paul McCartney's solo output consists of him simply noodling around in the recording studio, and releasing finished product of what sounds like minimal effort. Such as the case, once again, here. As what is frequently true with Mac's work, what ends up as the finished product tends to sound catchy, filled with hooks, and the melodies easily remain lodged in one's brain. This is what good music is supposed to do. Right? However it must be stated that had McCartney given more care to these tunes, and spent a considerable amount more time fine-tuning the material, this could have been yet another masterpiece. Again, though, it simply seems as though he's not interested in going through all the trouble.

There are definitely pleasant tunes here, yet there's a lot of filler and muck as well. Deep Deep Feeling runs at about eight and a half minutes, and it's, sadly, pure sludge. Such an embarrassment caused me to lower the ranking of this record by an entire half-star. Overall on the record, the goods and bads are about equal as far as my tastes go. I will also concede that there seems to be a hard core group of fans that tend to really like such excersions by the Ex-Beatle, so despite my lukewarm reception, other people tend to have conflicting opinions.