About.com Rating

Sir Paul's last musical decade wasn't the most surprising of his career, but it was the most solid -- dealing with the death of his soulmate Linda, his subsequent marriage to Heather Mills, and the messy denouement that entailed, Macca turned to his muse and dug in, bringing in outside producers at last and coming to grips with his legacy. Now, at 71, Paul defies the odds with a new album that's not just refreshingly solid but, thanks to his third marriage, emotionally rewarding.

The appropriately titled New finally gives McCartney the freedom to be unsure of himself, and it's ironically resulted in one of his most impressive post-Beatles releases.       

Paul McCartney's New 

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• Release date: October 15, 2013
• Label: Hear Music
• Catalog Number: 34837

• Musicians:
  Paul McCartney: lead vocals, bass, guitar, lap steel guitar, piano, organ, keyboards, drums, percussion, harpischord, harmonium, mellotron, Moog, bouzouki, celeste, glockenspiel, tambourine, maracas, Synthaxe
  Rusty Anderson, Brian Ray: guitars
  Toby Pitman, Paul "Wix" Wickens: keyboards
  Nina Foster, Patrick Kiernan, Laura Melhuish, Cathy Thompson: violins
  Peter Lale: viola
  Eliza Marshall, Anna Noakes: flutes
  Richard Pryce: bass
  Paul Epworth, Ethan Johns, Abe Laboriel Jr.: drums
  Dave Bishop, Abe Laboriel Jr.: saxophones
  Rusty Anderson: bouzouki, percussion 
  Brian Ray: dulcimer
  Rusty Anderson, Abe Laboriel Jr., Brian Ray: backing vocals
  Giles Martin: foot stomping

• Produced by Paul McCartney, Paul Epworth, Ethan Johns, Giles Martin, Mark Ronson Engineered by Josh Blair, Matty Green, Dom Monks, Al O'Connell, Sam Okell, Steve Orchard, Matt Wiggins 
  Arrangements by Ben Foster 
  Programming: Toby Pittman
  Mastered by Ted Jensen
  Studio Coordinators: Colette Barber, Alison Burton, Faryal Ganjehei, Tino Passante
  Cover by Ben Ib

?Pros

• Paul keeps his troublesome whimsy down to an absolute minimum. 
• New combines the solid craftmanship of his last few albums with a uptempo, slightly more modern approach.
• The emotional depth of his new songs are surprising for a pop veteran.

Cons

• Paul spends a little too much time looking back, musically and lyrically resting on his laurels a bit.

 

My review

Can Paul McCartney possibly be afraid of love? He blurts it out right at the end of his new album, pointedly and somewhat cleverly titled New: "I'm scared to say I love you / Afraid to let you know / That the simplest of words won't come out of my mouth." For the man who wrote a #1 single called "Silly Love Songs" as an act of what can only be called defiant sentimentality, the man who'd already crafted some of the most endearing love songs in history with That Other Band, it seems impossible. McCartney's tumultuous marriage to model Heather Mills -- which ended in 2008 with the kind of public mudslinging The Cute One abhors -- must have left a mark; he retreated into the studio and came up with three unusually solid but unremarkable solo albums, but they were the elder-statesman type of releases you'd expect from a man who was looking backwards, not forwards.

New is defiant but not silly; although McCartney typically makes "comebacks" every few years to capitalize on his living legend status, this is the first one in decades to really feel like a re-emergence, not just a reshuffling. At 72, he hasn't embarrassed himself by trying to second-guess the tastes of his grandchildren; he merely made a pop record for the New Normal of the industry, assembling four producers he liked, cutting tracks on the fly, and assembling them into a buffet of what's currently on his mind. No grand, sweeping Abbey Road majesty here, but also none of the Wings-like sloppiness. Having found a third wife in trucking scion Nancy Shevell, Paul sounds ready to enter life again, not just the marketplace. Although he clearly has his reservations.