McCartney III

McCartney 3 is Paul’s most recent album arriving to all of us as an early present one week before Christmas 2020 during a trying and historical year of human history. Early in lock down, I opined to my wife that it would be great if Paul were in the studio recording. Now we all know that indeed he was in isolation and making the homemade McCartney 3. His self-titled and homemade 1970 album McCartney is, for me, in Paul’s second tier of very good albums. I must have bought McCartney (now referred to as McCartney 1) sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s and to this day, I remain charmed by its offerings and the album has grown on me over time. The quirkiness of 1980’s McCartney 2 makes it one of my “guilty pleasure” Paul albums and one close to a second tier of very good albums. I must have bought McCartney 2 about the same time that I bought McCartney. At that time, I did not fully appreciate Temporary Secretary, Bogey Music, Nobody Knows, Dark Room, or the bonus tracks, Secret Friend and Check My Machine. Today, for me, McCartney 2 is a funky and weird album and perfect to play on a stressful day at work. As I have grown older, I increasingly appreciate Paul’s experimental and quirky side with Electric Arguments and Rushes as two of my favorite Paul side projects as the Fireman. Where does McCartney 3 fit into the Macca trilogy and his historical discography? After a few days of listening, McCartney 3 is like McCartney 1 in its themes of family, love and home. However, more like McCartney 2, the album has a darker and more somber edge to it compared to McCartney 1. The album’s opener, Long Tailed Winter bird takes a catchy guitar riff and builds a great groove. I have a newfound fondness for McCartney instrumentals (the unreleased Squid became a YouTube favorite during lockdown) and Long Tailed Winter Bird (a song with some lyrics) does not disappoint with its playful invention. The album's second song, Find My Way, is classic Paul. The song is upbeat, positive, and hopeful, it is McCartney doing what he does best (write melodic and memorable pop songs that stick in our head on first listen). The chorus says so much, “You never used to be afraid of days like these. But now you're overwhelmed by your anxieties. Let me help you out, let me be your guide. I can help you reach the love you feel inside.” The coda at 2:51 is unexpected on first listen and takes the song to a whole different and higher level. Pretty Boys and Women and Wives are both good songs but I have yet to fully connect to them, though I like the lyrics to both. I need some time on both of these songs because the lyrics seems more memorable than the melodies. Consider this nice lyric from Women and Wives, where Paul sings, “Teach your children and thеn Make 'em pass it to others. Some of them may borrow Tales you hand them down. Chasing tomorrow.” Lavatory Lil is fun, a light-hearted McCartney romp with a great guitar sound and funny lyrics that only Paul McCartney could write and record. Deep, Deep Feeling is over eight minutes of Paul singing of love and pain. I love the sound of the song and its efforts to resolve the building tension in the song but the song never quite resolves that tension. Paul was trying something new with the song and I admire that. The song’s coda, criticized by some, is perfect as the song seems to stop only to again pick up with Paul in his emotional pain. When he sings, “When you love someone so much, you feel your heart's gonna burst,” we can relate to his struggle with the contradiction of pain and intense love. Slidin is just old-fashioned heavy metal played by a 78 year old, amazing! Crank it up. I adore the chorus, “I'm slidin', glidin' through the air. I can see my body through windows in my hair. I'm slidin', glidin' through the air.” This could challenge Junior's Farm as my favorite McCartney post-Beatle rocker. The Kiss of Venus is, like Find My Way, instantly a McCartney classic. It is accessible, melodic, and sticks in your head on the first listen. Verse three is particularly nice, “Now moving slowly, we circle through the square. Two passing planets in the sweet, sweet summer air. Sweet summer air.” Seize the Day sounds very much like something from the Egypt Station album, a solid song that I like more on repeated listens and definitely a song of the pandemic with lyrics such as "When the cold days come and the old ways fade away. There'll be no more sun and we'll wish that we had held on to the day. Seize the day." Deep Down has a great contemporary feel to it with some R&B, hip-hop and jazz. This is a more contemporary Paul sound with a clean and perfect sound. I could listen to the song all day. Finally, Winter Bird and When Winter Comes is a fitting ending to the album. Here we find Paul and his early 1990’s voice (the song was recorded during a session that produced Calico Skies) returning to McCartney 1 themes of family and farm. However, the lyrics are now more poignant than they would have been if the song was released in the 1990s when Paul was singing it as a relative youngster in his early 50s. In the song, Paul sings, “Must find the time to plant some trees. In the meadow where the river flows. In time to come, they'll make good shade. For some poor soul.” I felt both sadness and hope as Paul realizes that he won’t see his new trees grow old but that others will reap the benefits of his efforts. I thought that this lyric summed the album. While McCartney 3 has received good reviews, Paul must know that he is now playing the long game and that many years after he has left this earth, young people from around the world will continue to discover his music. It makes me happy to know that in a hundred years, humans not yet born will experience the same joy and have the same experiences that I have had of discovering, exploring, and loving the music of James Paul McCartney. McCartney 3 will be one album that these future generations will want to discover. Paul, thanks for planting another tree.

McCartney III is very good album and the best of the three McCartney solo trilogy. Album begins with song "Long Tailed Winter Bird" which has some excellent guitar picking and is mostly an instrumental song. It is followed by the song "Find My Way" which would be good choice for single or radio play. It is song about providing emotional support in the COVID era and has rumbling bass line and horns. . Highlights of this album are the beautiful ballad "The Kiss Of Venus" and the ebullient "Seize The Day" . I cringed when I read the title "Lavatory Lil" but it is short little rocker about putting down a gold digger (wonder who that may be -lol). "Slidin" is where Sir Paul gets into his heavy metal groove and it is another album standout. The one song that will be either love it or hate it from most people will be the over 8 minute song "Deep Deep Feeling". It has everything from long instrumental passages, falsetto vocals and changes in tempo. The song has grown on me with repeated listens but I will admit some trimming would have made it even better. The album ends with song called "Winter Bird/When Winter Comes" which is beautiful song about farm life. The song is actually unreleased song from the 90's that George Martin produce. You can tell the difference of McCartney's vocal on this song compared to the rest of the album. Before listening to this album, I was a bit concerned about McCartney's voice, after all he is almost 79. His voice is weathered but it fits the songs on this album and when he sings with a falsetto he sounds good. This is not a commercial type album but it is very good album with no clunkers. I really enjoy it and I recommend it to people who are a fan of McCartney's solo work.

I wanted to listen to the CD at least ten times brfore ever attempting to review McCartney III. Here's what any of us already knew before ever listening to this album: Paul McCartney is one of the most creative musicians in the history of recorded music. Thus, he has a built-in audience and record sales could easily be high because listeners (fans) are well-acquainted with his individual brand of genius. This album allows us to see even more facets of Paul's psyche than we had in the past, and that is saying a lot considering he was founding member to two historically important groups and extremely successful as a solo artist as well. Do yourself a favor and purge any expectation that McCartney III is Beatles music or Wings music or even a remix of Flaming Pie. This is new. Rather it is the earthy sounds of Long Tailed Winter Bird or the Bluesy feel of Lavatory Lill, the album has range and may even produce a popular hits with Find My Way and Deep Down, in my view. And to further the "Deep" themes of the record, I counted the word occurring 79 times within two separate songs, which together total nearly 16 minutes of him suggesting that maybe we should look a little deeper. The longest track is called Deep, Deep Pain. It resonates with me; it will with anyone who knows the loss of a loved one. And he accurately conveys the ambivalence of desiring the painful memories to stop haunting you and yet you are afraid what might happen if the memory goes away entirely. Also within McCartney III are social commentaries regarding child abuse (Pretty Boys) and discrimination against females (Women and Wives). And we can't know Paul's personal history dealing with any or all of these subject matters, and I am afraid to him, but whatever his indights may be, McCartney III is a gem. A+. -Mike Robinson, Central City, IA.

Ótimo cd

Es el que completa la trilogía de McCartney, si bien no es el mejor álbum que a produccido Paul McCartney , es demaciado bueno , y está a la altura de sus antesecores (McCartney y McCartney II) Un gran álbum que todo fan de Paul McCartney debería tener. Por el momento Amazon lo tiene descontinuado (Vynilo) y espero que vuelva a estar a la venta muy pronto ,ya que es una completa joya que todos deberian escuchar. En cuanto al envío se tardó mucho tiempo ( 1 mes aproximadamente ) pero no me quejo por qué me lo venía avisando desde antes , además de que estaba a buen precio , llegó en perfecto estado 10/10

全ての演奏を１人で作り上げた事がやはり功を奏した傑作です。自らの作品の歌に自らの手で伴奏を合わせるポール師匠の得意技なのですが、それがやはり最もベストなサウンドに仕上がっているのは当然の結果なのです。 かつての名作 RAM の成功もリンダの参加はあったもののやはり殆どを１人で纏め上げた 結果の素晴らしさなのでしょう。ポップな派手さはここには有りませんが、成熟したミュージシャンが自らの音楽に真摯に向き合い語り掛ける様に紡ぎ出した作品に心を打たれます。MADE IN ROCKDOWN 流石です。

McCartney ha registrato il materiale durante il lockdown passato in fattoria e ne è autore, cantante, unico musicista e produttore. I fan del Nostro preuccupati che col tempo possa offuscare la propria leggenda, possono essere tranquillizzati: non è questo il caso. L'album è spontaneo, a tratti spigoloso lasciando quasi nulla al pop orecchiabile, con tocchi di inventiva che vanno compresi per essere apprezzati appieno, e ben suonato. Come nei precedenti I e II anche in questo III° atto è presente una certa vena sperimentale. Paul si è servito di registratori a nastro per creare effetti con sovraincisioni a diverse velocità di scorrimento: sono venuti fuori così i loop di chitarre di Find My Way (McCartney, guida sperimentale dei Beatles, fu il primo a portare in studio quella grande rivoluzione in campo sonoro che furono gli effetti in loop per Tomorrow Never Knows); sempre all'uso del nastro si devono, tra l'altro, il tappeto sonoro di chitarre di Deep Deep Feeling (rimaneggiata anche in altri modi) e il suono scuro della batteria di Slidin'. Oltre che con la abituale attrezzatura di chitarre acustiche ed elettriche, la batteria suonata con la consueta buona tecnica di base, il basso, il pianoforte e le tastiere, Paul si cimenta anche con un certo numero di strumenti in voga nel passato come il mellotron, il Moog bass, l'armonio e il calvicembalo, che danno carattere ai pezzi, nonché con dei classici come il contrabbasso che fu di Bill Black ai tempi di Elvis e una Fender Telecaster del 1954. Il suono mi piace, la batteria è compressa con una bella resa della cassa e del rullante, il basso Hofner, quando c'è, ha presenza. Nei testi ci sono naturalmente dei riferimenti alla fase di paura di quel drammatico momento storico non ancora pienamente superato, ma anche parodie (Lavatory Lil) e riflessioni sulla condizione umana (e forse sulla vecchiaia). Da un punto di vista musicale i pezzi che preferisco al momento sono il primo, Long Tailed Winter Bird così anomalo e intrigante; Slidin' originariamente una prova di gruppo del 2016 pubblicata come tale in altre versioni dell'album; e When Winters Comes ripescata dalla sessione del 1992 da cui scaturirono Calico Skies e Great Day con George Martin produttore e Geoff Emerick tecnico del suono. E' un album che piace di più man mano che lo si sente, per me è da 4 stelle e mezzo, ma è McCartney per cui si passa a cinque. La trilogia è completa, ma McCartney ha dichiarato di non volersi fermare ed è un'ottima notizia perché piaccia o meno parliamo dell'artista che ha dato più di chiunque altro alla musica moderna e al mondo per qualità e longevità. E allora, al prossimo album Sir Paul!

this is a good album, I think. It has varied songs and sounds and, for me its better than 'New', which was fine but a bit predictable. Ok some of the playing is a bit sloppy and his voice is not what it was even 5 years ago.... but its still good, and leads me to hope that more is to come - sometimes technique is not everything.