POLL: How do you rate Paul McCartney's "Chaos & Creation in the Backyard" album?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by mrjinks, Apr 14, 2015.

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  1. supermd

    supermd Senior Member

    Location:
    San Jose, CA
    Really? "Promise to You Girl" rocks as well. Harder than "Fine Line," I might add.
     
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  2. Slokes

    Slokes Cruel But Fair

    Location:
    Greenwich, CT USA
    I enjoy it and view it as one of his typically worthwhile later-period efforts, but there is a certain too much softness about it. "Fine Line" is a cool track, and the lyrics are both engaging and wryly thoughtful. Is "At The Mercy" a pun on the Liverpudlian river, or is that just me trying to read a When We Was Fab reference in an album that seems to otherwise leave that part of Paul's legacy alone for once?
     
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  3. JLGB

    JLGB Senior Member

    Location:
    D.R.
    Great gift to myself. I love it! It was available at my Barnes & Nobel, on the 13th of September, my birthday! Time flies...
     
  4. Mother

    Mother Forum Resident

    Location:
    Melbourne
    Masterpiece.

    Up there with his very best work.
     
  5. Drifter

    Drifter AAD survivor

    Location:
    Vancouver, BC, CA
    Ding ding ding ding ding ding!
     
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  6. Drifter

    Drifter AAD survivor

    Location:
    Vancouver, BC, CA
    Very twee, very he. I recall joking with a record store guy that it sounded like a Rutles song.
     
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  7. Mother

    Mother Forum Resident

    Location:
    Melbourne
    Love that track. One of the best on the album.


    You lift up my spirits, you shine on my soul

    Whenever I'm empty, you make me feel whole

    I can rely on you, to guide me through

    Any situation..........
     
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  8. Dr. Pepper

    Dr. Pepper What, me worry?

    +1 exactly!
     
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  9. moople72

    moople72 Forum Resident

    Location:
    KC
    Somewhere between not bad and solid.

    The next two albums are better.

    Nigel wasn't the right choice----Paul sounds too inhibited---the melodies don’t really stand out as original. It’s not unpleasant but there’s no real spark----it sounds effortless---too effortless.
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2015
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  10. applebonkerz

    applebonkerz Senior Member

    I voted "Not bad". The slip cover was the best thing about this release -- it was brilliant. I found the album as a whole entity to be distinctly skewered toward dull. Dull is much better than cringe-worththy, but not something I've been compelled to listen to since the first few months of release, nor do I have any particular desire to pull it down off the shelf ever again except to look at the cover.

    I don't get the raves about it compared to the few albums of his that are actual classics from the early years. :shrug:
     
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  11. Bobby Morrow

    Bobby Morrow Senior Member

    I think it was his best 'modern' album until New came along. The latter is such a uplifting, positive album that's it's almost impossible not to get a kick out of it even now.
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2015
  12. Dr. Pepper

    Dr. Pepper What, me worry?

    Yes, New didn't do nearly as well in it's poll, but to me Chaos and New are his modern day masterpieces that are yin and yang to each other in many ways. With Electric Arguments and Complete Kisses being his two best realized side projects ever, and Ocean's Kingdom his best written Orchestral work ever. This last decade (2005-2015) has been Paul's most diverse, successfully realized, and interesting decade of his entire career and one of his most prolific, IMHO.

    2005-2015
    14/06/05 Twin Freaks
    12/09/05 Chaos And Creation In The Backyard
    25/09/06 Ecce Cor Meum [Behold My Heart]
    04/06/07 Memory Almost Full
    24/11/08 Electric Arguments
    14/12/09 Good Evening New York City
    24/01/10 Live In Los Angeles
    03/10/11 Ocean's Kingdom
    06/02/12 Kisses On The Bottom
    26/11/12 Complete Kisses/Live From Capitol Studios
    14/10/13 New
    2015 Kanye West Project
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2015
  13. paulmccartneyistheman

    paulmccartneyistheman Forum Resident

    I was thinking the other day, while listening to NEW, when will this album get old? When will I get tired of it and put it away for a year and come back to it? Then I realized it was April 2015, and I still put the songs on in the mix of early solo and Wings. What an album.

    With Chaos, its very delicate, and you have to hear in order and all at once, it's a very complete work. But New is like total freedom and energy, I love Chaos, but NEW has edge
     
  14. DrBeatle

    DrBeatle The Rock and Roll Chemist

    Location:
    Midwest via Boston
    One of his best...fantastic album and another in his strong run of great late career albums (apart from Driving Rain) that started with Flaming Pie
     
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  15. Bobby Morrow

    Bobby Morrow Senior Member

    New is stuffed with melodic, clever songs. As a non-musician, I'm fascinated how he puts these things together. How does he manage to make the verses and bridges as memorable and catchy as the choruses?! I'd say New is a virtual masterclass for anyone thinking of penning a song. You can't go wrong.

    I do love C&C (Whoops. I keep forgetting that's what this thread is about!), but I did reach that time you speak of when it goes on a back burner for a while. Memory Almost Full I never really took to. I couldn't quite get over the horrible mastering on that album, but I don't think the songs are as striking as the ones on C&C anyway..

    Still, New beats all. It's his best album since Tug Of War for me. And I really love Tug Of War!:)
     
  16. theMess

    theMess Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kent, UK
    I voted for 'clearly one of his best works', as I personally believe that it is one of his greatest solo albums, alongside Ram, New, Tug Of War and BOTR.

    In many ways it is his most mature solo effort, and this does lead to the occasional criticism that it is too 'down' or 'ballad-heavy', but I could not disagree more. I find the album to be diverse in a way that is very similar to the Beatles mid-period albums: there is the Music Hall of English Tea, the pure McCartney pop of Fine Line, the rocking Promise To You Girl, the folky Jenny Wren and the bossa-nova tinged A Certain Softness.

    The entire albums sounds to me like an alternative Beatles album, and it is perhaps the most Beatlesque album of his career IMO (alongside Tug Of War).

    I personally think that Godrich did a great job as producer, because he made Paul work hard and was able to get Paul to listen to his critiques, even if they did cause some tension.
    I love the fact that he got Paul to record the album in a similar way to McCartney and McCartney 2, because this does lead to the album having a very personal feeling to it.
    Every song, and every production choice seem very considered and well thought out, and songs like How Kind Of You are lifted to higher levels thanks to these production choices.

    I personally think that the mixture of working with Godrich, whilst having to deal with his painful and messy divorce from Heather Mills, make this in many ways his most emotional album. He sounds like he really means what he is singing, which has not always been the case in his solo career, and the lyrics are uniformly strong, most likely because many of them reference his sadness at the time, and this mean something to Paul.

    Some of my favourite songs include: the wonderful Jenny Wren, which I see as a modern cousin of Blackbird, and arguably the greatest song on the album, Fine Line, which is a major earworm which reminds me of Lady Madonna, This Never Happened Before, which sounds like it could have been on the Let It Be album alongside the title song and The Long And Winding Road, A Certain Softness, a song that makes me wish that he would dabble more often with Latin sounds, the Beatlesque Too Much Rain, which could easily have been a hit had it been released in the 60's and Friends To Go, a great, catchy song which sounds just like something George would have written.

    Another favourite of mine is the fantastic At The Mercy, which has a vocal performance that really makes the most of Paul's ageing voice. This really sounds to me like a Beatles classic from an alternative Universe, and I am extremely pleased that Godrich inspired him to write it. This is the other contender for the strongest song on the album IMO, alongside Jenny Wren.

    Another song where Godrich deserves a lot of credit is Riding To Vanity Fair, which he helped turn into a brooding and sombre masterpiece, and one of the most un-McCartney like songs of Paul's career. It makes a nice change to hear Paul sounding genuinely angry/annoyed, in a way that he didn't on the song Angry from PTP.

    I feel that Follow Me gets unfairly criticised at times; it may not be the universal anthem that Paul may have hoped that it would be, but that doesn't stop it from being a song with a lovely melody and nice lyrics.

    I also feel that Anyway gets forgotten simply because there are so many other strong ballads/slower songs on the album, but I personally think that it holds its own very well, and that it has a really lovely and delicate melody, and another strong vocal from Paul. I love how the song ends, and then the instrumental 'I've Only Got Two Hands' kicks in, a nice nod to Her Majesty at the end of Abbey Road. I really like 'Two Hands', especially the piano part, and think that it works really well.

    Overall, I think that the album is uniformly consistent and strong, maybe more than any of his other albums, and I definitely think that it is the solo-McCartney album that is most like a Beatles album, something that can only be a very positive thing. Flaming Pie and Driving Rain both had some very strong songs and high points, but IMO Chaos has more.
     
  17. Somewhere between option #2 and 3. I chose #3, not bad. I like some of the songs (Fine Line, Jenny Wren, How Kind Of You, This Never Happened Before), but there's a lot of filler. When it comes to McCartney's solo career, it's certainly no Band On The Run or Ram, it also doesn't come anywhere near Tug Of War and Venus & Mars or even Back To The Egg or Flaming Pie. I'd only recommend this to fans who have already all of the aforementioned titles and want more McCartney.
     
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  18. theMess

    theMess Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kent, UK
    I completely agree; it is arguably the best decade of his career since the 1960's, an amazing achievement.

    Paul is proficient on many instruments, has diverse tastes, is musically adaptable and has a seemingly never-ending well of melodies. These talents allow him to experiment in many different areas of musical composition to some degree of success.

    I just hope that he releases several more albums over the next few years, because he has been on a great run, and I want it to continue for as long as possible.
     
  19. andy75

    andy75 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sweden
    One of his best works. Like the sound of it & the fact that it's ballad heavy. His best album since "Off the Ground". Like it more than the three that followed it too.
     
  20. babyblue

    babyblue Patches Pal!

    Location:
    Pacific NW
    This album has never done anything for me, which is strange, because I can tell Paul did put a lot of effort into it. It feels like I should like it, but often sounds like half-baked Beatle (or even Rutle) tunes to me.
     
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  21. Dr. Pepper

    Dr. Pepper What, me worry?

    If you would have asked me if in my wildest dreams I could imagine the last 10 years musical output from Paul, I would have told you no way and that you were quite insane. Creativity is a young man's game, well maybe not!
     
  22. Frank

    Frank Senior Member

    Not a favorite of mine. What's not self-important pretense on it winds up being self-conscious navel gazing. I don't hate it, and I wind up liking the individual songs when they come up on shuffle more than I like the album as a listening experience. I find it a snore overall.
     
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  23. daveidmarx

    daveidmarx Forem Residunt

    Location:
    Astoria, NY USA
    I voted 'solid effort' based on memory... But I'm playing it now and damn... I wanna change my vote as this is one of his best albums of his career. The Mess nailed pretty much my sentiments regarding this album. I'll just add that the arrangements on this album show a creativity and attention to detail that Paul hasn't given since the early '70s. Maybe it's Nigel's doing, but the deliberate use of instrumentation to build a song show a thoughtfulness not seen since Band On The Run. Fantastic sound to this album as well. I know it's brickwalled to an extent, but unlike MAF, this has such an engaging sound to it. It draws me in every time. And such clear sounding vocals. As much as I like what David Kahne brought to the table for Paul as a producer, sonically CAC blows his stuff away.

    Much is made of Jenny Wren's relation to Blackbird. How about A Certain Softness's relation to And I Love Her? But unlike the first comparison where it's a close run, but Blackbird might have the edge over Jenny, Softness betters And I Love Her at every turn. Better lyrics, better instrumentation and better production make this song one of my favorites from the LP. I love the wordless backing vocals during the bridge, I love the way the piano swoops in during the third verse, I love the Spanish guitar during the instrumental bridge, I love EVERYTHING about this song! :)
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2015
  24. DLant

    DLant The Upstate Gort Staff

    Location:
    Albany, NY
    I'm really enjoying this album. It's very old school Paul. His lyrics are so damn wonderful and so are his melodies.
     
  25. paulmccartneyistheman

    paulmccartneyistheman Forum Resident

    I watched Between Chaos and Creation on Youtube this week and I absolutely recommend anyone to watch it if they haven't. It is pretty decent including a snippet of the fast Vanity Fair, that song is a gem.
     
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