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Paul McCartney: New

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Virgin EMI Records
Released: 2013.10.14
Time:
 46:11
Category: Pop/Rock
Producer(s): Mark Ronson, Ethan Johns, Paul Epworth, Giles Martin
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.paulmccartney.com
Appears with: The Beatles
Purchase date: 2014
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Save Us (P.McCartney/P.Epworth) - 2:39
[2] Alligator (P.McCartney) - 3:27
[3] On My Way to Work (P.McCartney) - 3:43
[4] Queenie Eye (P.McCartney/P.Epworth) - 3:47
[5] Early Days (P.McCartney) - 4:07
[6] New (P.McCartney) - 2:56
[7] Appreciate (P.McCartney) - 4:28
[8] Everybody Out There (P.McCartney) - 3:21
[9] Hosanna (P.McCartney) - 3:29
[10] I Can Bet (P.McCartney) - 3:21
[11] Looking at Her (P.McCartney) - 3:05
[12] Road (P.McCartney/P.Epworth) - 7:39 *

* - Includes "Scared" as a hidden track.

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Paul McCartney - Vocals on [1-12], Guitar on [1-5, 8-11], Bass Guitar on [1-4, 6, 8-11], Percussion on [2, 4, 5, 6, 10-12], Synthesizers on [2, 4, 10, 11, 13], Celeste on [2, 12], Glockenspiel on [2], Play-Me-A-Song Book on [2], Cigar Box Guitar on [3, 7], Piano on [4, 6, 8, 12], Drums on [3, 7, 10, 11], Lap Steel Guitar on [4], Mellotron on [4, 6, 8, 11], Upright Bass on [5], Harmonium on [5], Harpsichord on [6], Wurlitzer Piano on [6, 10], Bouzouki on [6], Keyboards on [7, 8, 12, 13], Tape Loops on [9, 10]
Rusty Anderson - Guitar on [2, 3, 5-8, 10, 11], Bouzouki on [6, 7], Backing Vocals on [6, 7]
Brian Ray - Guitar on [2, 3, 6-8], Dulcimer on [5], Backing Vocals on [6, 7], Baritone Guitar on [7]
Paul Wickens - Keyboards on [2], Guitar on [3], Piano on [3], Accordion on [3], Backing Vocals on [6], Hammond Organ on [10]
Abe Laboriel, Jr. - Drums on [2, 6-8], Backing Vocals on [5-7]
Toby Pitman - Programming on [3, 7, 8, 10, 11], Keyboards on [8, 11]
Ethan Johns - Drums on [5], Percussion on [5], iPad Tambora app on [9]
Paul Epworth - Drums on [1, 4, 12]
Eliza Marshall, Anna Noakes - Alto Flutes on [8]
Giles Martin - Foot Stamp on [8]
McCartney Family Chorus on [8]
Cathy Thompson - Violin on [3,8]
Laura Melhuish - Violin on [3,8]
Patrick Kiernan - Violin on [3,8]
Nina Foster - Violin on [3,8]
Peter Lale - Viola on [3,8]
Rachel Robsin - Viola on [3,8]
Caroline Dale - Cello on [3,8]
Katherine Jenkinson - Cello on [3,8]
Chris Worsey - Cello on [3,8]
Richard Pryce - Double Basses on [3,8]
Steve McManus - Double Basses on [3,8]
Steve Sidwell - Trumpet on [6]
Jamie Talbot - Tenor Saxophone on [6]
Dave Bishop - Baritone Saxophone on [6]

Mark Ronson - Producer  on [2,6]
Ethan Johns - Producer  on [5,9]
Paul Epworth - Producer  on [1,4,12]
Giles Martin - Producer  on [3,7,8,10-12]

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded between January 2012 – March 2013, Henson Recording Studios, Los Angeles; Avatar Studios, New York; Abbey Road Studios, Air Studios, Wolf Tone Studios, London; The Mill, East Sussex



On the third Anthology compilation, you can hear the Beatles trying to record Paul McCartney's Teddy Boy during the January 1969 sessions documented in the Let It Be film. Or, at least, three of the Beatles are trying to record Paul McCartney's Teddy Boy. John Lennon had long tired of the quainter side of his collaborator's work, or "Paul's granny music" as he put it, with his legendary tact. Having already suffered through umpteen tries at Maxwell's Silver Hammer earlier in the month, Lennon appears determined to derail proceedings. First he makes McCartney laugh and fluff the lyrics. Then he drowns him out by singing the Hokey Cokey over the top of his winsome tale of a boy named Ted. Finally he begins shouting fake square-dance calls in a thick Scouse accent.

McCartney still sounded a bit cheesed off about it around the time of Anthology's mid-90s release – "it was, in some way, indicative of friction" – but the latter had a point. Teddy Boy wasn't a great song. Indeed, you could argue that, ever since the Beatles split, McCartney has been in need of someone to drown out his lesser ideas. Initially, sales figures suggested he could manage without one, but he's certainly auditioned enough collaborators since his previously infallible hitmaking powers began to wane. He last had a top 10 single 26 years ago, during which time he's tried working with everyone from Elvis Costello to the Freelance Hellraiser. None of them have lasted long, testament either to an admirably restless creative spirit or the mixed results each collaboration evinced: plenty of great songs, but no unequivocal triumph of an album.

New hedges its bets, drafting in four relatively young producers: Mark Ronson, Paul Epworth, Ethan Johns and George Martin's son, Giles. Martin aside, those names indicate a desire for contemporaneity: understandable, given that McCartney's last album was the now obligatory elder-statesman-of-rock diversion into the Great American Songbook. But at its worst, on Everybody Out There, this desire manifests itself in thumpy post-Mumford faux-folk and Coldplay-style massed "woah-oh" vocals. It's not snobbery about the source material that makes this depressing, so much as the sense of someone eagerly jumping on ideas that long ago curdled into cliches, like a tragic uncle suddenly leaping from the dinner table with a cry of "watch this everyone!" and launching into the Gangham Style dance.

At the other extreme, there are moments when McCartney has clearly allowed his younger producers to push him into areas that are intriguing rather than infuriating. Appreciate is fantastic, a nagging, circular, Beta Band-like groove decorated with a guitar solo you'd describe as surprisingly angular and avant-garde if you'd forgotten the way McCartney played guitar on the Beatles' Good Morning Good Morning. Early Days is even better. McCartney's singing sounds different: thinner, more tremulous, aged. It's been recorded without reverb, which lends a stark intimacy that fits with the lyric's sombre reflection on his past: "So many times I had to change the pain to laughter just to keep from getting crazed." There's an argument that one thing McCartney's latter-day songwriting lacks is a convincing mature voice of the kind Bob Dylan found circa Time Out of Mind: whether or not you buy into the critical hysteria that's greeted every album Dylan's released since, they still collectively represent a distinctive new phase in his body of work, full of songs his younger self couldn't have written. Early Days suggests McCartney might actually have found one. An album with more songs like it would have been more interesting than the one he's ended up with, but you suspect McCartney's just too much of an inveterate crowdpleaser to venture down such an introspective and gloomy route.

Alexis Petridis, 10 October 2013
© 2015 Guardian News and Media



At 71, Paul McCartney hasn’t changed his tune, despite calling his latest and 16th (!) studio album, New. He’s the same affable rock star he was back in October of 1962, when he issued The Beatles’ first single, “Love Me Do”. That ornamental English accent, his trademark shag, and his boyish smile can still charm teenagers across the world, as creepy and awkward as that might sound, in theory. In every way, he’s the industry’s Stephen Colbert; a coy, intelligent, and sharply dressed man, forever entertaining from the stage, whether it’s recorded or IRL. Truth be told, there isn’t another McCartney we know of, the same way there isn’t another Colbert, which is why few people ever have anything but positive words for them (well, with the exception of conservatives and those that side with Lennon, Harrison, Starr, or Stewart).

That’s why it’s so odd to hear McCartney sing a line like, “All my life I never knew/ What I could be, what I could do.” Of course, he’s referring to his post-Heather Mills relationship with Nancy Shevall, but the line still feels telling, nonetheless. He’s always been forthcoming with his narratives — whether it’s something obvious like “Maybe I’m Amazed” or rather mercurial like “Friends to Go” — but a track like “New” suggests he’s been holding back on his inner demons. Granted, the surviving Beatle’s tickled at his own self-deprecation throughout his entire career, but that’s a pretty weighty line. It’s as if Billy Joel released a song called “I’ve Never Had a Drop”, or Dylan teased fans with a line like, “The times are bored/ and I’ve been young too long.” Basically, that line’s enough to make you think, Okay, what’s up Paul?

The answer? A lot. Over 13 tracks, McCartney proves he’s a better Paul than 2007′s Memory Almost Full, a more romantic Paul than 2005′s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, a more inventive Paul than 2001′s Driving Rain, and a more nostalgic Paul than 1997′s Flaming Pie. All of those tour dates and festival spots revisiting Abbey Road, Revolver, and Past Masters have paid off tremendously, bringing us a round of stormy blues rock (“I Can Bet”), elegant balladry (“On My Way to Work”), furious post-folk (“Everybody Out There”), and, naturally, the timeless AM pop of yesteryear (“New”). It’s like he feels he has something to prove, as he sings on “Alligator”: “Everybody else is busy doing better than me/ But I can see why it is.”

Though, unlike so many veterans who still feel compelled to regale us with new releases, McCartney does so under the auspices that it’s okay to absorb today’s influences. And why not? Opening track “Save Us” jogs at the frantic throwback pace of The Strokes or half a dozen garage rock bands of the last 10 years, only there’s a slight Wings glaze to it (invite Julian Casablancas in and it might be an early demo of “Reptilia”, but don’t tell Paul). “Appreciate” toggles electronica a la Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz, though there’s a grinding slide guitar solo at the end that tailors to McCartney’s closet Southern rock obsession. It’s surprising that out of all the tracks here, this one isn’t produced by Mark Ronson, but Giles Martin. The two shared the controls behind New, alongside Ethan Johns and Paul Epworth. In hindsight, it’s rather poetic that George Martin’s son would be the one to shed a modern light on McCartney.

Forty-seven minutes is a long time, however, and allows for a few minor bruises. The repetitive psychedelia of “Hosanna” begs for Harrison or Clapton’s guitar work; the inventive “Looking at Her” gets a little cyclical, despite the Muse-y fills; and the theatrical, Who-inspired closer “Road” scrambles to reach the peak its lyrical and instrumental climb suggests. Instead, it’s the album’s “secret” track, “Scared”, that serves as an apt closer, a bare bones ballad that finds McCartney at his best instrument: the piano. Amidst a midnight stream of consciousness, he sings: “I’m still too scared to tell you/ Afraid to let you see/ That the simplest of words won’t come out of my mouth, though I’m dying to set them free/ Trying to let you see/ How much you mean to me.” And like that, he leaves us with the Paul we’re most familiar with — the helpless heartbreaker.

As Ben Greenman recently wrote in The New Yorker, “He’s Paul McCartney, and he’s Paul McCartney now the way that he was Paul McCartney ten years ago, or 30, generically exhorting listeners to action or reminding them of glory of love or sketching the outlines of a less pleasant emotion (fear, sadness, unregulated anger) without any real specifics.” That idea remains true on New, which is why it’s so enjoyable, and accessible, and quintessential to McCartney’s catalogue. Yet, a read between the lines suggests that he’s turning pages on his life that crack the Dorian Gray through-line he’s nurtured with his impromptu high school performances and Times Square takeovers. It all sounds and feels new, but his wiry navel-gazing suggests otherwise. ”They can’t take it from me if they try/ I lived through those early days,” he pleads on acoustic number “Early Days”. Those aren’t the words of a young man, but the words of an older bard, and only now are we saying hello.

Michael Roffman - Oct. 17, 2013
Consequence of Sound



At its quietest moments, 2007's Memory Almost Full played like a coda to Paul McCartney's illustrious career; he seemed comfortable residing in the final act of his legend, happy to reflect and riff upon his achievements. Such measured meditation is largely absent from 2013's New, the first collection of original material he's released since 2007. New lives up to its title, finding McCartney eager, even anxious, to engage with modern music while simultaneously laying claim to the candied, intricate psychedelia of latter-day Beatles. Five decades into his career, reinvention isn't expected from McCartney, so the shock arrives in the avenues Paul chooses to follow and, here, he's enthusiastically embracing modernism and pop art. He brings in Mark Ronson, the producer best-known for hits by Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen, to add a bit of modern snazz, but sharp guy that he is, McCartney knows that contemporary pop albums are created by a fleet of producers, so Paul Epworth, a collaborator of Adele, Foster the People, and Florence & the Machine, is hired along with Ethan Johns (a veteran of Kings of Leon and Laura Marling) and Giles Martin (the son of Beatles producer George Martin), each enlisted to give New a crisp, clean sheen. There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen but the chef is undoubtedly McCartney, with every song - from the kaleidoscopic title track to the delicate folk of "Hosanna" and the pounding, overstuffed "I Can Bet" - bearing his unmistakable stamp. From the moment it opens with the insistent, propulsive "Save Us," this is a bright, vivid pop album, robust with color and so confident in its swagger that its assurance is almost distracting. Macca is determined to dazzle: not only are the melodies bold but the production is over-saturated so his pop pops in a way it hasn't in years, not since the days when a Top 40 single was a genuine possibility. Paul isn't chasing a hit single but rather embracing pop as a vital, vivacious life force, which makes the presence of "Early Days" all the more baffling. A stark acoustic recounting of the dawn of the Beatles, McCartney seems uncharacteristically defensive here as he wonders how anybody who wasn't in Hamburg could possibly tell tales of the Fab's origins, strangely tone-deaf to how he and his band have turned into myth. But that unwillingness to accept his role in history books also gives New its nerve, letting McCartney create music that is thoroughly within his lineage but cleverly modern, eschewing nostalgia for a vibrant present. That's why New is one of the best of McCartney's latter-day records: it is aware of his legacy but not beholden to it even as it builds upon it.

Thomas Erlewine - All Music Guide



New is the sixteenth studio album by Paul McCartney, released on 14 October 2013 in the United Kingdom and in the United States on 15 October 2013. The album was his first since 2007's Memory Almost Full to consist entirely of new compositions. The album was executive produced by Giles Martin, with production by Martin, Mark Ronson, Ethan Johns and Paul Epworth and it was mastered by Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound, New York. McCartney has stated that New was inspired by recent events in his life as well as memories of his pre-Beatles history. He added that some of the arrangements are unlike his usual rock recordings, and that he specifically sought out younger producers to work with.[5] He and his stage band performed in various venues to promote the album, along with promotional events held through social media. The first single, "New", and the album were met with a generally favourable reception from music critics. The album peaked at number 3 on the UK Albums Chart and on the US Billboard 200.

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