[Dixielandjazz] Paul McCartney reviewed - London Telegraph, January 27, 2012.

[Robert Ringwald]

Has anyone heard this album yet?  I am curious about it, but not curious enough to spend money on something that I might only listen to once.  
And I suspect that would be the case.  

--Bob Ringwald

  
Paul McCartney: Kisses on the Bottom (Hear Music)
by Neil McCormick
London Telegraph, January 27, 2012
John Lennon famously disdained Paul McCartney's music hall tendencies as "nice little
folk songs for the grannies to dig". But the Beatles' appeal owed as much to solid
roots in Tin Pan Alley tunemanship as rock bite and experimentalism, lessons in classic
song structure embedded in them from their parents' generation.
For his 35th post-Beatles album (counting Wings, classical, soundtrack and electronic
works), McCartney pays homage to songs he first heard his father play on the family
piano. The mood is of warm and cosy nostalgia, laced with the qualities of magic
and emotion familiar from McCartney's own works of whimsy. He loves this material,
and it shows.
The apparently risque title is cheekily lifted from the opening track, the Fats Waller
classic I'm Going to Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter, rolled out as a loose,
light jazz flight with a rippling piano solo from Diana Krall. Surrounding himself
with a band of stellar jazz players, for the first time in his career the multi-instrumentalist
opts only for the role of vocalist.
We rarely think of McCartney as a singer, because he is obviously so much more. The
focus on interpretation exposes the ageing in his voice as it thins out in his high
register but he performs with delicacy and nuance: understated, acoustic-flavoured
arrangements allow him the space to sing with soft precision. The lower register
of Irving Berlin's Always suits him, and he delivers this dedication to a long-awaited
love with the smoky conviction of a besotted and bedazzled old roue. When he sighs
"my heart is forever yearning," on Home (When Shadows Fall) it is impossible not
to believe him.
For all the playfulness of songs like the gently swinging Its Only a Paper Moon,
McCartney never tips over towards archness or pastiche.
The greatest compliment you can pay McCartney's two originals is that it is impossible
to pick them out as contemporary songs amongst the standards.
Only Our Hearts may be unremarkable but for a trademark Stevie Wonder harmonica solo
but My Valentine has the ring of a classic, with a gorgeous descending cadence and
perfectly pitched romantic sentiment, gilded with a light fingered acoustic solo
from Eric Clapton.
Unlike Rod Stewart and other ageing pop idols who have refashioned themselves as
retro-crooners, McCartney has no imperative to build a new career covering old songs
and the album is all the better for it. It sounds like a romantic gift to his new
wife and a sentimental salute to his own childhood -- a minor gem from a major talent.
I suspect grannies won't be alone in cherishing it.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
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