Paul McCartney - Egypt Station

The Guardian 60

(Capitol)
Macca tries to keep up with the kids by recording with super-songwriter Ryan Tedder, but the strongest moments are when he embraces his own innate talent for melody – and his angst

During the promotional blitzkrieg for his 25th post-Beatles solo studio album, Paul McCartney told a revealing story about one of its tracks. Fuh You was made in collaboration with Ryan Tedder, a songwriter-for-hire best known for writing Leona Lewis’s Bleeding Love and Beyoncé’s Halo. A chart fixture throughout the 70s and 80s, McCartney last had a Top 10 single 31 years ago – unless you count his supporting role on Rihanna’s Fourfiveseconds, when his voice was sped up and drowned out by Kanye West. He sought out Tedder, he explained with admirable candour, in pursuit of “a hit”. During the sessions for the track, however, McCartney became concerned: “I’ve been involved with songs that have meaning, and this doesn’t amount to anything,” he protested. “Y’know, I wrote Eleanor Rigby.”

The track in question rather makes you wish he’d paid attention to his haughty inner voice. It is a less traumatic experience for the listener than Mick Jagger’s recent collaboration with Skepta, but there is still something depressing about a Paul McCartney song that sounds as if it was assembled on a latterday pop production line. Not least because it doesn’t sound like the kind of undeniable smash that latterday pop production lines occasionally come up with, but the stuff they palm off to pad out albums. The best thing about it might be its Beatle nerd-appeasing title, with its reference to the obscure Apple-released single King of Fuh by Brute Force.

Drowned In Sound 60

The tension between these instincts is what’s made his best songs so dynamic, but throughout his solo career, the balance has been off. On one end, he’s produced experimental oddities such as 1980’s McCartney II. At the other, saccharine pop tat like ‘Ebony & Ivory’. Egypt Station is the latest attempt then to reconcile these two sides and an admirably ambitious, albeit messy, return of McCartney’s creative ambition.

The album’s paper-thin conceit is that each song is based at a different station on a long-distance journey, harking back to the ‘album albums’ he pioneered with The Beatles. In practice, this just gives McCartney free rein to try out whatever sounds take his fancy. It means Egypt Station finds time for introspective piano ballads, seven-minute multi-genre epics and determinedly low-brow pop. The result is the sharpest and most engaging McCartney record in a long while, but also the most ill-disciplined.

Rather than blend his instincts for experimentation and crowd-pleasing, McCartney chooses to compartmentalise so there are two versions of Egypt Station playing out at once. One is his boldest and most interesting album in decades, best represented by its lengthy closing songs and a genuinely odd bossa nova update (‘Back in Brazil’). Unfortunately, the many highlights on Egypt Station are cancelled-out by poorly-judged takes on modern radio pop and unnecessarily ill-fitting raunchiness. ‘People Want Peace’ is McCartney at his most insufferably vague, ‘Come On To Me’ forces us to imagine a 76-year-old Macca on the pull, while ‘Fuh You’ is a childish attempt at provocation wrapped up in bland, anodyne arena-pop production.

These moments are unfortunate because when McCartney takes a more graceful, stately approach to his song-writing, he is often excellent. ‘Confidante’ is a graceful Beatles-esque ballad which could have slipped neatly onto any of his past records and ‘I Don’t Know’ is a sweet acknowledgement of his uncertainty in older age. McCartney’s writing is unmistakeably traditional on these songs but production work from pop stalwart Greg Kurstin gives them extra bite and colour. Although the song-writing on Egypt Station can feel somewhat workmanlike at times, as if he is retracing comfortable ground, there is enough invention and creativity on offer to convincing argue that there is worth in hearing a new Paul McCartney album in 2018.

It has never been entirely clear why McCartney doesn’t make more experimental records in his later life and cash in on decades of goodwill, especially as the best songs on Egypt Station are the ones which feel least desperate to be liked. He could easily take a route like David Bowie did in his later years, but this is where the biggest problem with the two McCartneys lies. The uncomfortable truth is that Paul McCartney probably does like ‘Ebony & Ivory’ as much as ‘Paperback Writer’, even if much of the world might disagree.

Egypt Station is easily one of the most forward-thinking records of McCartney’s later career and a surprisingly welcome return. We might wish he could be more thoughtful and elegant in his older age, and maybe even a little bit cooler, but that wouldn’t make him Paul McCartney. Thankfully, he generally keeps his groan-worthy impulses to a minimum.

Pitchfork 58

Part of the Beatle’s charm lies in his vacillation between the banal and the profound, sometimes within a single song. Despite its dark moments, his 17th solo album is firmly within this tradition.

The Guardian 0

(Capitol)
By turns playful, honest and questing, Paul McCartney hitches empathy to experimentation on his urgent new album

Quite why the foremost living author of western popular music still feels he needs to prove himself, 17 solo albums in from The Actual Beatles, is a moot point. Paul McCartney could spend his time lounging about on the supplest of vegan pleather divans, getting wavy on the finest marijuana strains ever crossbred. He could feel satisfied that semi-legalisation – at least for the likely joint pain of a 76-year-old – was nigh, and that his status as the patriarch of western popular culture was secure.

But Macca doesn’t get high any more, he confides on Happy With You – a deceptively simple ditty on Egypt Station, his latest album. You know it’s McCartney from the first acoustic guitar figure. He used to lie to his doctor, he sings, but that’s no longer necessary either. He likes his life with Nancy Shevell, we learn. He takes solace in nature.

With a background in jazz, Kurstin is the sort that won’t flinch if McCartney throws a little backwards guitar at him