By Zach Adler:
It’s quite fitting that the album cover for “NEW,” the 17th solo album by Paul McCartney, is a series of bright pink and orange neon lights and not a photo of the ex-Beatle. It’s a preview of the colorful album that is kept inside, where colors shine through the music and McCartney is the one who controls the music but never dominates over it.
“NEW,” McCartney’s first album of completely original songs in six years, is his statement to the world that he is still the best pop songwriter around, and can outplay just about anyone. So for this, McCartney brings in four different highly acclaimed producers, Mark Ronson (Amy Winehouse), Paul Epworth (Adele), Ethan Johns (Kings of Leon) and Giles Martin (Son of Beatles producer George Martin) to be his secret weapons in the 2013 pop landscape.
This variety of producers leads to a wide range of styles that McCartney brings out in “NEW,” which makes this album play out like classic Beatles and Wings albums.
The album charges out of the gate with “Save Us,” high-energy rock with a locomotive beat, heavy guitar riffs, and a particularly fun chorus. This fun travels through the album’s more upbeat moments, such as the made-for-live-performance folk rock, “Everybody Out There” and the jaunty, orchestrated glam-rock odyssey “Queenie Eye,” the standout of the album.
Not every moment is upbeat, as McCartney throws in his patented stripped-down ballads such as the casually floating “Early Days” or the stunningly gorgeous “Hosanna,” which are both sincerely reflective without seeming sappy.
The centerpiece of the album is the title track, “Got To Get You Into My Life”-esque reverie that signals McCartney’s rebirth. It is a song that grabs all the melodic wonder that he showed the world in his Beatles days, only to show small glimmers of it over the next forty years. It shows McCartney at his most melodic, most charming and most fun.
But the true fun comes out in the bonus tracks of the Deluxe Edition album, where McCartney unleashes his power with the multi-part “Turned Out,” the fame-statement “McCartney” or “RAM”-esque country rock of “Get Me Out Of Here,” and the solo piano closer “Scared,” which ends the album on a perfect somber-but-hopeful note.
There are some problems with “NEW,” though. At 52 minutes, the album flies by at a pace that sometimes seems a little rushed
“NEW” could have been a par-for-the-course McCartney studio album with the normal mix of loud rockers, cheery pop, and somber ballads supported by McCartney’s multi-instrumental prowess, catchy hooks, and amazingly tight four-piece band and that would have been fine.
But instead, McCartney lets his imagination run wild, unloading a bucketful of color, electronics, psychedelia, tape loops, and youthful charm that makes this record a masterpiece of a pop album, a representation of the jubilee of his live persona, the best pop album of 2013 and a statement that shows that McCartney will always be with us, with his timeless voice and his Hofner bass to show us what rock and roll is really about.
