No, the Fireman projects don’t represent Paul McCartney’s first forays into experimental pop since the Beatles busted up. The difference between Electric Arguments – by far the most successful of a now three-part series – and, say, 1980’s McCartney II was that Paul had someone to bounce ideas off of. There was another voice in the room, much like John Lennon, to push him – and to pull him back.
Without that, McCartney’s outsider moments tend to exist more as unfocused vanity projects (Wild Life, II), self-involved noodlings (the closing sequence on Red Rose Speedway, that instrumental stuff on Back to the Egg, the interludes on Tug of War and Pipes of Peace) or simply half-finished demos (Paul’s debut solo recording, parts of Flaming Pie). There was a frisky, yet more controlled spontaneity to Electric Arguments, like what “Get Back” might have sounded like in the modern era.
Writing again with former Killing Joke bassist Martin Glover (aka “Youth”), Paul McCartney advanced the notions first explored on a previously released pair of ambient/electronica efforts (1994’s Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest and 1998’s Rushes) much deeper into the purity of first-take songcraft. Featuring a title said to be inspired by an Allen Ginsberg poem that Paul had read recently, Electric Arguments featured 13 tunes written over the course of 13 days, with each composed and recorded in one session – similar to his stripped-down oldies recording Run, Devil Run from 1999.
Importantly, Electric Arguments was also issued by an indie, the UK-based One Little Indian, after more established companies worked the first two Fireman efforts. Set free from the boundaries of his own fame, even from his own name, McCartney flourished. He and Youth ultimately discovered a new song-based sound that included vocals. This challenged Paul in ways that the duo’s more free-form predecessors never did.
The chugging and bluesy “Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight” was, easily, the heaviest track Paul McCartney has attempted since the Beatles’ howling “Helter Skelter” decades back. That sounds right coming from Youth, who produced the Verve and the Orb but also Guns N Roses’ bootleg favorite Chinese Democracy. Yet Electric Arguments, issued on Nov. 24, 2008, also allowed for the mellow psychedelia of “Lifelong Passion.”
McCartney ruminated on a childlike wonder during “Sing the Changes.” And it’s there: With no release date, no glowering label big-wig and no expectations, McCartney found the wide-open spaces that characterize his best work as a songwriter. Just as importantly, however, he had new eyes to examine those ideas, and to provide the appropriate counterpoint.
Before, it was Lennon – who, for instance, completed the Beatles’ “We Can Work It Out” and “Getting Better” with deft and dark stanzas that balanced otherwise sunny pieces of hopeful confection. John also later convinced McCartney to keep a placeholder lyric, his brilliantly oblique line “the movement you need is on your shoulder,” as part of “Hey Jude.” Same here. “Sun Is Shining” sounded like your typical Paul McCartney song, after it’s been cuffed around some. “Sing the Changes” was Wings, with an echoing, modern spin.
McCartney needs both a governor and a kick start, and he got them from Youth. Together as the Fireman, I’d argue that they created one of the best – or, at the very least, most adventurous – Beatles solo releases ever. Mostly because it’s not a solo release at all.
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