Memory Almost Full

Paul McCartney is truly in a class of his own, but not always for the right reasons. The enduring cultural importance of his accomplishments-- and the fact that his private life still moves tabloids in the UK-- affords him a greater stature than your average classic-rock icon. His formidable bank balance suggests that his ongoing recording and performing career is motivated by something more significant than financial gain, but unlike fellow 60s survivors Bob Dylan and Neil Young, McCartney's senior years have not produced an album to challenge the notion that all his best work is decades behind him.

He came close with 2005's mostly acoustic Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, a deliberate and welcome retreat to the homespun simplicity of his 1970 self-titled debut. But while Chaos may have been the best album of his post-Wings career, it still felt a touch too familiar to constitute a Time Out of Mind-style late-career surprise. You have to wonder if McCartney's unwavering dedication to maintaining his cheery, "cute one" persona negates the sort of sobering introspection that aging rockers often require to create revelatory, relevant albums in their sixties.

That McCartney's latest album is being released through an exclusive retail agreement with Starbucks only serves to reinforce the most damning stereotypes about him: he's too safe, too typical, too square. And on first song "Dance Tonight" [video], he plays right to latte-swilling crowd, with an egregiously innocuous mandolin-folk hootenanny ("Everybody gonna dance tonight/ Everybody gonna feel alright") custom-built to have his target demographic tapping along on the steering wheels of their Beemers. It's perhaps the least exciting, least arousing song about moving to music since Genesis' "I Can't Dance". But as Memory Almost Full plays out, you get the sense that by opening the album with this trifle, McCartney is perhaps intentionally pandering to those stereotypes, and that "Dance Tonight" could very well be a sitting-duck decoy for an album that turns out to be a lot more idiosyncratic than its coffee-chain marketing plan suggests.

For one, McCartney isn't just writing love songs here; he's writing sex songs. Take the boudoir-bound white soul of "See Your Sunshine", which, if you can forgive the lame mad/sad/glad rhyme scheme, could be the smoothest (read: horniest) thing he's written. And if "Only Mama Knows" plays like a standard-issue rocker-- a less fun "Junior's Farm", to be exact-- it could be the first song he's written about trolling airport lounges for one-night stands. All of which would suggest that Memory Almost Full is Macca's post-Heather rebound album. As he insisted in last month's Pitchfork interview, his recent, media-saturated divorce proceedings had no bearing on the songwriting, much of which predates Chaos. However, at this stage in his career, one of the most daring things McCartney could do is show us that even the eternal thumbs-aloft optimist we see hamming it up at photo-ops and awards-show presentations can occasionally crack under the scrutiny. The stress seems to show on the opening line of "Ever Present Past" ("I've got too much on my plate/ Ain't got no time to be a decent lover") but the song turns out to be just another reminiscence for the good ol' days, albeit with a perky new-wave rhythm that's almost novel enough to make you overlook the fact the song lacks a real payoff chorus.

These songs comprise Memory's patchy first half, betraying the album's piecemeal recording process. But even these unremarkable turns are dotted with interesting production quirks (the tremolo-heavy guitar fuzz on "Ever Present Past", the foreboding string sweeps that bookend "Only Mama Knows") that suggest a more mischievous spirit lurking behind the pedestrian songwriting. Thankfully, McCartney's oft-overlooked eccentric streak is given freer rein on the album's second half, which feels far more cohesive and substantial thanks to an Abbey Road-like aversion to between-song gaps and an affinity for choir-like vocal effects that momentarily turns the enterprise into a Queen album. In particular, "Mr. Bellamy" rates as a worthy addition to his canon of stodgy-English-folk character studies, colored by baroque flourishes, baritone backing vocals and a coda reminiscent of the eerie, dying moments of "Magical Mystery Tour". McCartney can be guilty of tripping the light bombastic (see: the squealing guitar solos on overblown power ballad "House of Wax"), but he also knows when to keep it lean and mean: "Nod Your Head" sounds like "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" as remixed by Sonic Youth, a blues goof given a palpably more threatening edge by a spark-shower of abrasive feedback textures.

Piano ballad "The End of the End"-- an uncharacteristically somber meditation on looming death-- is being positioned as Memory's defining moment, but the obligatory string-section swells and a too-cute whistling solo detract from its affectingly melancholic melody. For a more honest portrait of Macca '07, look to Memory's best (and loopiest) song, the self-effacing retro-culture commentary "Vintage Clothes". The sprightly piano intro initially suggests a rewrite of Fleetwood Mac's "Say You Love Me", but its West Coast idyll is soon pushed askew by a skittering dub break and subliminal synth/bass frequencies; top it off with some vintage Wings-style harmonies and you've got a prog-pop triumph just waiting to be to covered by the New Pornographers. Sure, the song's opening salvo ("Don't live in the past") is a bit rich coming from someone who still makes millions by singing 40-year-old songs in sports arenas. But for the two minutes and 21 seconds it takes for "Vintage Clothes" to traverse its shape-shifting universe, the sentiment rings true-- because the song proves that McCartney still knows the difference between just singing about the past and measuring up to it.