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Creativity Is Hard Work, Apparantly: Paul McCartney's Chaos and Creation in the Backyard

reviewed by dave heaton

For Paul McCartney's new album, Radiohead producer Nigel Goodrich worked with McCartney to try and take him out of his comfort zone, to rid him of his bad habits and get him to make a better album, free of the cheesiness and hollow nostalgia-rock run-throughs that he tends to fill up his albums with. In interviews McCartney has described how difficult but ultimately rewarding the process was, as Goodrich fired McCartney's band, rejected possible songs, and demanded changes in the tempo or style of other songs.

The resulting album screams "take me seriously" before you've even pressed play. It bears the rather pompous title Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. The black-and-white cover photo is a suitably "artistic" shot, at an unusual angle, of a young McCartney playing guitar in the backyard. And the CD booklet includes minimalist sketches of McCartney's hands. Open the CD up, though, and the first thing you see is an image of Paul playing air guitar, jumping in the air with a goofy grin on his face; it's an advertisement for tour sponsor Lexus, a notice of a contest where you can win a car. It's a telling inclusion - on the outside you have McCartney the "serious artist", but on the inside it's his goofball celebrity persona that you see first. It's fitting for the album. Not because the album doesn't sound thoroughly like an attempt at "serious art", it most definitely does....but because making art is obviously really hard work for McCartney, who seems much more comfortable being a celebrity - doing TV commercials for Fidelity Investments, going on tour and playing mostly "the hits".

For all its sparseness musically (for it is much less crowded, much less bombastic than some of his solo albums), the album still sounds very belabored over, like McCartney was working really hard to show how serious he could be. The album's lyrics read as love letters, as emotional expressions and confessions: "Come home brother / all is forgiven", "how kind of you to think of me / when I was out of sorts", ""you lift up my spirits / you shine on my soul", "we can cure each other's sorrow / won't you please please get in touch". But in delivery they often sound so polite and mannered that these sentiments slip right past you, without making you feel like anything important is being expressed. Some of it has to do with the ultra-serious tone of everything - simply put, the album feels like a funeral. But it's also about how awkward and underformed many of the melodies seem, starting right with the first track, "Fine Line", where wordy lyrics are uncomfortably wedded to a rolling, slightly bluesy song that sounds really familiar.

Elsewhere the melodies just sort of float away before your ears, not leaving much of an impression ("Riding to Vanity Fair") or just feel too pedestrian ("Follow Me"). The exceptions stand out boldly. "English Tea" is a trifle, just a sprightly little song about a leisurely, sunny Sunday morning, but it's catchy and comforting, feeling much more substantial than it should. "Jenny Wren" might have echoes of past Beatles songs in its melody, but it doesn't matter because it's gorgeously brittle and spellbinding. The lyrics themselves aren't remarkable, but McCartney sings them in a delicate, sensitive way that really accentuates the melancholy yet ultimately hopeful emotions in the song. And the sparse arrangement - guitars, one floor tom, and an Armenian woodwind called a duduk - really helps in this regard. "Too Much Rain" stands on a sentimental verge, but ultimately feels more honestly optimistic than schmaltzy, due in part to the McCartney's determined yet graceful vocals, and the complementary array of instruments. Album-closing piano ballad "Anyway" isn't the strongest song on the album, but it sounds pure and pristine next to the 'bonus' ramble of "experimental" blues sludge that follows it, an obvious one last stab at "relevance."

There's points throughout the album, even on the most awkward of songs, where the instrumentation and arrangements take over your attention and you can hear the benefits of Goodrich's efforts to simplify McCartney's music. Small pieces of the songs sometimes impress more than the bigger picture. It's interesting, still, that it took big ideas and extra prodding to get McCartney to try such basic things as writing from his heart and not relying too much on a backing band. How far drawn into the world of celebrity must he be to see those as fresh new ideas?

Ultimately, with Chaos and Creation... what we end up with is much like some of his other recent albums: a few really impressive songs and a bunch of rather unmemorable ones. The clear and often quite compelling arrangements are a key difference compared to say, Flaming Pie, though they also contribute to a sameness of sound that sometimes threatens to drag the whole album down. The screaming cry of IMPORTANCE that this album bears makes it almost too easy to dismiss, for its pretension alone. Cast it aside completely, though, and you'll miss a few truly remarkable pop songs; they're faint reminders that McCartney is still a talented songwriter, even if he seems most comfortable wearing his businessman and showman hats.


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