Memory Almost Full
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Forget the current Sgt Pepper nostalgia fest. It may be 40 years ago today, but the real story is hidden towards the end of Paul McCartney’s umpteenth solo record. The End of the End nods to a Beatles classic with its title and setting – it appears as part of a medley, not quite Abbey Road standard but by no means poor – but that isn’t its significance. Sir Thumbs-Up has written a rather lovely song about death’s inevitable approach, a subject this venerable pensioner has had too much recent experience with.

His erstwhile “rival”, the Beach Boy Brian Wilson, was penning tunes such as ’Til I Die before he had left his twenties, but McCartney has always been the sensible one, rock’s great autodidact, a man so curious about everything that he let it distract him from his unique melodic gift. Now he has turned to his own demise.

The theme runs through the record. “I know I’m not a square as long as they’re not around,” he sings in Feet in the Clouds, presumably referring to his late bandmates. If McCartney has spent years trying to comprehend his own role in creating the world we inhabit, then at least he seems comfortable with himself. Ever Present Past, musically an extremely catchy revival of McCartney’s 1980s experiments with light electro-pop, alludes to fading memories, while the gently rocking That Was Meis like a man perusing old photos of himself, in McCartney’s case surely a Sisyphean task.

Macca’s last album, 2005’s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, was widely acclaimed, yet for all the plaudits this cleverly titled set seems to be a more honest collection of songs. On that album the producer Nigel Godrich seemed to take his task too seriously, sometimes turning McCartney into his own pasticheur.

This time round David Kuhne gives him free rein. Again McCartney plays most of the instruments, but the results are less predictable or tasteful. See Your Sunshine, slight at first, reveals a gorgeous melody after a few plays. Only Mama Knows belts along like ELO at their peak, or perhaps more recent Macca acolytes Wilco and Super Furry Animals. (It also shares a tune with Abba’s Super Trouper.)The inexplicable psychedelia of Mr Bellamy (David? Matt? Craig?) makes sense only to its creator, yet charms for all that. Less fogged is Gratitude, easily interpreted as a paean to McCartney’s estranged wife.

The timing is perfect too. Macca’s rancorous marriage break-up really did set the public back on his side. As the sanest and wealthiest man in pop music appeared vulnerable, a nation remembered why they cared for him in the first place.

He reciprocated, stopped dyeing his hair crimson and has made a record appropriate to his age that never resorts to musical nostalgia. The possibly mawkish revelation that the album’s title is an anagram of “For my soul-mate LLM” – Linda Louise McCartney – seems to have redeemed him only farther.

Ironically, as the last baby-boomer hero confronts his own mortality, hippy capitalism has snapped him up. This is McCartney’s first release on Starbucks’s own imprint. This means that this surprisingly magnanimous record will be the strongest item on the menu.

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