[Dixielandjazz] Paul McCartney reviewed

[Rob McCallum]

Hopefully goes better than Ringo's standards album (yikes!). I'm looking forward to hearing it. Cheers!Rob McCallum PS: Happy to be back on the list after quite a few years! 
 > From: rsr at ringwald.com
> Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 07:20:20 -0800
> Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Paul McCartney reviewed
> CC: dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
> To: solarjazz at hotmail.com
> 
> Long read.  Delete now if not interested.  
> 
> 
> 
> Paul's Love Does Them Good
> by Thomas Conner
> Chicago Sun-Times, February 5, 2012
> The idea sounded perilous -- Paul McCartney, one of the most revered writers in pop
> music, shifting gears into interpretive mode for an entire album of standards from
> the '30s and '40s. John Lennon used to knock McCartney's "granny music" in the Beatles
> (specifically deriding "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da"), and now here's McCartney at age 69,
> a grandfather himself, cooing through Johnny Mercer and Fats Waller?
> Should we expect a double bill at casinos this summer with Michael Buble?
> McCartney, though, has been a nostalgic old fuddy-duddy since he was a teenager.
> "Yesterday" wasn't his only misty-eyed glance backward, and he was especially reflective
> on his last album of original pop, "Memory Almost Full" (2007), which found him examining
> his "Ever Present Past" as well as singing, "Don't live in the past / Don't hold
> on to something that's changing fast" ("Vintage Clothes").
> Never one to take his own lyrical advice, McCartney told Rolling Stone magazine last
> year he's wanted to do an album of standards "since the Beatle days" and delayed
> it further with good reason: "Rod [Stewart] went mad on it. I thought, 'I have to
> wait so it doesn't look like I'm trying to do a Rod.'"
> Blessedly, McCartney does not pull a Rod. "Kisses on the Bottom" (out Tuesday from
> Hear/Concord) is a trifle, for sure, but a largely pleasant one.
> The cheeky title, so to speak, comes from the second verse of the album's first song,
> "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter," referring to the X's and O's
> with which the narrator plans to amend his signature. This album is its own love
> letter, a heap of sentiment collected for McCartney's late father, Jim, who played
> these songs at the piano for his family in a Liverpool suburb. The production and
> arrangement throughout is just that intimate, in fact, which is what makes the whole
> thing so instantly comfy.
> McCartney's aim isn't as broad as Linda Ronstadt's recordings with Nelson Riddle,
> nor do these "Kisses" smack with the retro gimmickry of Stewart and countless others
> who've used the "songbook" to substitute a lack of ideas. This is a very quiet, delicate
> set that fulfills McCartney's simple, stated mission: "This is an album you listen
> to at home after work, with a glass of wine or a cup of tea."
> "Kisses on the Bottom," in that respect and others, greatly resembles "As Time Goes
> By," Bryan Ferry's 1999 album drawing from a similar era. Like McCartney here, Ferry
> had no delusions of being a jazz singer, but he surrounded himself with fine players,
> kept a leash on everyone including himself and came out the other end with a nifty
> cafe record.
> McCartney is backed by several astute jazz players, including Diana Krall and her
> band, who don't play their instruments as much as they pet them, stroke them, sigh
> into them. The jazz guitar on "Always," the wistful piccolo on "Only Our Hearts"
> (one of two songs McCartney wrote for this occasion), Krall's fleet, feathery piano
> throughout -- it's all so light sometimes it barely holds together. McCartney's voice
> spends much of the time in an unusually high register, cooing and sighing, only coming
> down to recognizable Macca for "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive," which is about as
> punchy as this album gets, and his other original tune, "My Valentine."
> The two original compositions are graced by some extra guests -- Eric Clapton's guitar
> on "My Valentine," Stevie Wonder's harmonica on "Only Our Hearts" (the first time
> they've recorded together since "Ebony and Ivory"). Both songs slide easily into
> the oeuvre. McCartney's Beatles tunes became standards themselves, later covered
> by Ella and Sinatra. Neither of these new tunes leaps out as an enormous accomplishment,
> but either could enjoy long life snugly in the songbook with the other oldies.
> It's warm, it's cozy, it's whimsical. (In fact, the only time the record really nose-dives
> is when the whimsy overtakes it, as in the odd selection of "The Inch Worm" or the
> cutesy way McCartney sings "My Very Good Friend the Milkman.") It's utterly unnecessary,
> only a paper moon. But McCartney presents more conviction and heart here than he
> has on many of his more rocking solo albums. "More I Cannot Wish You," indeed.
> ___________________________________
> by Kitty Empire
> London Observer, February 5, 2012
> Even the most distracted student of popular culture has probably learned that pop
> and its unkempt cousin, rock, came along in the 1960s and swept away all that had
> come before. Teenagers no longer wanted to listen to the same music as their parents,
> and their parents before them: that frumpy aural wallpaper known as "the standards".
> The Beatles were responsible for much of this melodic overhaul, channelling the energy
> of rock'n'roll and R&B.
> As he reaches his 70s, however, it seems as if Paul McCartney has decided to come
> clean about some other formative influences. Even the Beatles, McCartney's new album
> asserts, were touched by the songwriting of the American hit factory auteurs of the
> 1920s, 30s and 40s: Irving Berlin (represented here by the saccharine swish of "Always"),
> Harold Arlen ("Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive", rather more fun) and Frank Loesser
> ("More I Cannot Wish You"), to name but three. No one was immune. McCartney is normally
> seen as the Beatles' soppiest traditionalist, the Fab most in hock to the dapper
> old dreamers. It's an impression that persists, even though he's never shy of portraying
> himself as source of the Beatles' more avant-garde ideas. On "Kisses on the Bottom",
> however, he accentuates the conservative.
> McCartney's 15th solo album is a jazzy, feather-light collection of standards, punctuated
> by two McCartney originals ("My Valentine" and "Only Our Hearts") that blend so immaculately
> into their habitat, they are hard to spot on a first listen. Soon, though, "My Valentine"
> stands out because it's the song that reminds you most of those sentimental Beatles
> tracks, and because McCartney's voice sounds most at home on it, necktie undone,
> pouring itself a gin fizz. Covering these orchestral big-band jazz tunes casts pop's
> architect in the strangely straitened role of vocal interpreter, having ceded the
> playing and arranging to jazz people such as pianist Diana Krall and producer Tommy
> LiPuma. (Eric Clapton is on here too, as is Stevie Wonder, with a Disney bluebird-style
> harmonica part on "Only Our Hearts".) Where there could so easily have been smug
> studio torpor, the arrangements are airy; all precisely plunked upright bass and
> brushed drums.
> As a consequence you are drawn, perhaps unfairly, towards McCartney's vocals. These
> often feel a little papery. And because the renditions are so breezy, the emotional
> depths of these songs remain resolutely unexplored. Does anyone other than his new
> wife really need to hear McCartney sing Benny Goodman's "The Glory of Love"? Nothing
> here is ghastly, exactly; merely anodyne. There is a familiar, testosterone-filled
> version of history that insists music is just a constant churn of rebellion, one
> in which pop sneers at standards, rock grunts at pop, punk kicks against prog and
> machines destroy analogue. In contrast, "Kisses on the Bottom" foregrounds evolving
> constancy; just as valid a reading.
> There might be a wrinkle or two in the notion of Macca being an arch-traditionalist,
> but he does grasp something that runs through a century of popular music. We are
> all still firmly in thrall to melody and love songs. These standards have a lot still
> to say -- if only they sang a little more potently here.
> ___________________________________
> by Glenn Gamboa
> Newsday, February 3, 2012
> There's something so adorable about the way Paul McCartney sounds like a schoolboy
> in love throughout "Kisses on the Bottom" (Hear Music).
> Of course, Macca has his reasons. He's still a newlywed, after all, having married
> East Hampton transportation executive Nancy Shevell in October. But "Kisses on the
> Bottom" sounds unlike any other McCartney album -- because of the song choices and
> their simplicity.
> His breezy version of the Harold Arlen classics "It's Only a Paper Moon" and "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate
> the Positive" set the bar for the album -- bright, stripped-down, mostly acoustic
> interpretations, tinged with New Orleans jazz and matched nicely by McCartney's earnest,
> unadorned delivery.
> You can almost hear him smile his way through Fats Waller's "My Very Good Friend
> the Milkman." With his original "My Valentine," McCartney walks right up to the line
> between poignant and sappy without crossing it, thanks to some well-placed acoustic
> guitar. He kind of falls over into sappiness with the children's classic "Inchworm,"
> the bane of piano-lesson-taking kids everywhere, but that can be forgiven, since
> it follows the delightfully bluesy take on Charles Brown's "Get Yourself Another
> Fool."
> "Kisses on the Bottom" isn't high-concept like 2007's "Memory Almost Full" or envelope-pushing
> like 2005's "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard." It is a pleasant, well-crafted
> trifle, an enjoyable little distraction that delivers a lovely time. It's essentially
> the soundtrack to the romantic comedy playing in McCartney's head -- and there's
> nothing wrong with that.
> ___________________________________
> by Pete Clark
> London Evening Standard, February 3, 2012
> Upon hearing the title there was some trepidation in my bosom as to the contents
> of this LP. Something about it besmirched good old "thumbs aloft" Macca, arch-advocate
> of a cup of tea and a sing-song around the old joanna. I need not have worried: the
> title simply quotes a line from the first song, I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write
> Myself a Letter, and refers to those kisses that appear at the bottom of syrupy missives.
> With the exception of two originals, this is a selection of old tunes that Paul grew
> up loving and, given that he's quite ancient, these are prehistoric. Needless to
> say, they are immaculately arranged and played with distinction -- the upright bass,
> semi-acoustic guitar, a sussuration of brushed percussion, silken strings, perfectly
> plinked piano, a flash of guitar from Eric Clapton on Get Yourself Another Fool (can't
> think who that one might be aimed at...).
> And yet. Although pitch perfect, McCartney's voice is wasted on such sentimental
> codswallop as Inch Worm, It's Only a Paper Moon, The Glory of Love and Accentuate
> the Positive. Anyone would think he had a new woman in his life. And don't get me
> started on My Very Good Friend the Milkman. Suffice to say: Warning! May contain
> whistling.
> ___________________________________
> by David Burger
> Salt Lake Tribune, February 5, 2012
> Paul McCartney is releasing a new album of standards, songs that he calls "the songs
> which inspired the songs" that made The Beatles legendary.
> The album is unfortunately called "Kisses on the Bottom," an off-putting title until
> you realize that he's referring to the bottom of a letter. With the help of Diana
> Krall and her band, as well as guest appearances from Eric Clapton and Stevie Wonder,
> McCartney's new album is full of songs that, in some cases, a young Paul first heard
> his father perform on piano at home.
> The problem is that although Macca turns 70 this summer, he has always embodied never-ending
> youth and vitality, but these songs reveal a frailer and weaker voice with too-smooth
> arrangements that linger listlessly. We want rock, not a rocking chair.
> ___________________________________
> by Simon Price
> London Independent, February 5, 2012
> Why, Paul, why? The flinch-inducing title, lifted from Fats Waller's "I'm Going to
> Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter", suggests that McCartney lacks anyone to
> tell him when he's had a terrible idea.
> That song is the opener of a set of 12 covers and two originals. No expense has been
> spared in giving them an authentically vintage feel: to paraphrase Dolly, it costs
> a lot of money to sound this cheap. He used to be in The Beatles so if we don't like
> it, we can kiss his bottom.
> 
> 
> --Bob Ringwald
> www.ringwald.com
> Fulton Street Jazz Band
> 530/ 642-9551 Office
> 916/ 806-9551 Cell
> Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV
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