McCartney III [VINYL]

Not including live albums, ‘best of’ packages or experimental collaborations, this is Mr McCartney’s 27th long playing release. (If you include those others, I make it number 45.) And this is the third of those where he is (not quite) the sole participant, hence the title. With no plans to issue anything this year, like many of us, as he’s been unable to do much these last nine months or so, I guess he decided that he might as well do what he does best; record a new album. Here it is.LONG TAILED WINTER BIRD: There aren’t many words to this and it’s more of a five minute instrumental.FIND MY WAY: Starts off well with descending piano chords and is quite catchy. It ends suddenly.PRETTY BOYS: Taking photos of the title with ‘cottages for rent’. Hmmm, what’s that all about and where did he get the idea for this?WOMEN AND WIVES: His voice shows its age here and the meter of the lyrics is the same as the second track but taken at a slower pace.LAVATORY LIL: The first real rocker of the album, it’s one about a gold digger. With a great driving beat, I can see this being performed on stage. The best track on the album.DEEP DEEP FEELING: At more than eight minutes, this is rather overlong and to be brutal, also boring. It fades and returns as an acoustic for the final 70 seconds.SLIDIN’: Is he trying out grunge on this? The hypnotic backing is effective.THE KISS OF VENUS: An acoustic ‘ditty’ sung mainly in a high register. The tune is nice; the singing not so much.SEIZE THE DAY: Make the most of what’s in front of you. No doubt dinosaurs, Eskimos and Father Christmas haven’t all been mentioned in too many songs.DEEP DOWN: Some slow and easy jazzy backing makes this six minute track sound like a studio jam with McCartney making up the words over a continuous keyboard riff. It’s actually quite good.WINTER BIRD/WHEN WINTER COMES: Starts with a reprise of the opening track, it turns into a rather pleasant acoustic ‘ditty’ about being self sufficient. The reason he sounds younger on this is because he was; it’s from 1992.Not as good as his last two albums, there are some good songs here, some middling ones and one that I think is a bit of a mess. The playing is exemplary (as it should be), the writing is still superior than most others can manage, but I have to be honest here and say his voice isn’t the best on some of what’s included. But I’m sure he has no intention of packing it in just yet. Still in demand, all the while his vast legion of fans (myself included) buy everything he releases, could he ever actually ‘retire’?

As The Beatles fell apart in 1970 Paul McCartney retreated to his farm with his wife Linda and children as well as a 4 track tape machine recording his first solo album this included songs such as Junk, Every Night and his first solo hit single Maybe I'm Amazed. In 1980 after spending sometime in a Japanese jail and with Wings falling apart he once more returned to his home studio recording McCartney 2 with the hit singles Coming Up and Waterfalls this album sounded better than the first probably because the recording equipment he was using was more sophisticated than McCartney 1.So to 2020 a pandemic ravaging the world it is back to his home studio and we get McCartney 3 recording equipment has moved on and we get the best sounding of these three solo albums . The album begins with a beautiful acoustic guitar figure on Long Tailed Winter Bird, Pretty Boys might hark back to the days of Beatlemania, the throwaway Lavatory Lil has a sort of Glam Rock stomp to it I also like Women And Wives as well as Seize The Day and Deep Down. This album still retains a connection to the other two McCartney albums in that it retains that home made charm emphasised by the family snapshots on the cover. The album is worthy of its predecessors though probably not the best I still prefer the first album which due to the difficulty of recording give it an extra charm. So if you don't expect studio perfection you will find a charming, enjoyable album but probably not his best.

Drawing comparisons with the Beatles doesn't necessarily help in evaluating a solo piece of work from the ex-Beatle, but it's so difficult not to. There have been a few occasions over the last 50 years when a McCartney album has almost reached the heights of the Beatles (e.g. Band on The Run, Flaming Pie) but generally these have been few and far between. There's something about a McCartney album where it's just Paul, writing, playing and singing everything. No collaboration, no input from musicians who like to add their own slant. Having listened to McCartney III several times I'm beginning to think that this is one of those albums that is almost as good as it going to get. It's as if that freedom he allowed himself to indulge in has resulted in producing an album which, if Harrison, Starkey and particularly Lennon were around, prodding, poking and interjecting, might have resulted in some really good, contemporary Beatles music. I was going to say it's not 5 stars because it's not the Beatles but that seems unfair; McCartney hasn't been in the Beatles for 50 years. But he's the only artist to whom that would apply. You wouldn't mark down another artist because they're not the Beatles. This is a good album, a really good album and I would highly recommend it. But it's not the Beatles!

Great album.

Absolutely over the moon with this Paul McCartney cd my father in law absolutely loves it thanks

A welcome, if surprise addition to the “McCartney” trilogy.There can be a problem when artists do everything themselves on their album, in that they can't sound-board ideas off the producer or fellow musicians (whist recording "chaos & creation..", producer Nigel Godrich really pushed McCartney"), but that hasn't been a problem with "III", as his has created a pretty assured collection of songs.Favourite tracks are “Long Tailed Winter Bird” which has an enjoyable lose jamming feel (I wouldn’t have minded if the entire album sounded like this) & the quirky folk-ballad “When Winter Comes”, although Lennon may have called it one of Paul’s Granny songs.Only quibble is that III isn’t a bit more experimental, McCartney could have added at bit of electronic music to the album like in the vain of "Temporary Secretary".Still another strong album to add to McCartney’s catalogue (he’s been on good run of albums since 1997's “Flaming Pie”), so at least there has been something positive to come out of all this isolation.

Aweful!!