New Paul McCartney album "Egypt Station" coming September 7, 2018*

If you recall: When Off The Ground came out, Paul's publicist (Geoff Baker, I think it was) bragged that it was Paul's best album of songs since The White Album.

Geoff was wrong...

 

Yes he did -- I remember reading it in Beatlefan. The sheer audacity of that statement -- jettisoning the usual "best since Band On The Run" hype and basically saying "Off The Ground is better than Abbey Road" -- was staggering.

 

Yeah,,, But it WAS his best album since Flowers in the Dirt!

 

Extremely wrong.

Off The Ground, Paul's weakest album of the 90s.

 

Well, the only other studio albums were Flaming Pie and Run Devil Run. So it's pretty safe to make that statement.
Can't really count Liverpool Oratorio, the live releases and the first two Fireman albums.

BUT, I personally rank Off the Ground higher than some of his 80's stuff.

 

I rank off the ground Relatively highly. Higher than flowers. It actually was the album that got me interested in Paul's solo career.

 

Off The Ground and Flowers, and even NEW share a certain feature: they are very eclectic. Not just superficially, but they whole sound varies from song to song. This is in contrast to Driving Rain or Chaos, where there is an underlying mood and sound that is consistent from start to finish. Even Flaming Pie feels like that, despite being recorded over a good number of years and with a variety of producers and collaborators. If you play someone five random Chaos songs and then ask their opinion, then played them the entire album and asked again, I'd expect them to share the same reaction. Whereas with the first three, there is such a variety that you can't condense it down. I'm not going to say if that's a good or bad thing. What it comes down to is that if Paul is doing so many different things on an album, it's easier to judge the individual parts before assessing the album as a whole.

But no matter how you slice Off The Ground, it ain't no White Album!

 

Geoff Baker: seems like he'd be a congenial guy to hang out with, with oodles of stoner charm, but, in his capacity as Paul's publicist, not missed at all. Not at all.
Still burned that he tried to sell a great album like Rushes on the basis of its "charvering" female vocals, which was to miss the key and compelling narrative by a mile.

 

Off topic: I absolutely loved 'Off The Ground', but mostly the bonus tracks on CD 2 of 'The Completed Works'. The problem with the main album is that it left many of those superior songs off. A common McCartney problem.

On topic: I just hope Paul doesn't leave off gems on his next release the same way.

 

I'd say that's more a Bob Dylan problem typically, but yes it certainly was an issue with Off The Ground.

Perhaps he could have done it as a double album. I don't mean disc 1 being the album and disc 2 being the bonus cuts. I mean a full album incorporating everything, but still ending on C'mon People (maybe still with the cool transition to Cosmically Conscious, but then let that song play out in full as an unlisted track, in turn cutting out the Down To The River tag.) Interesting idea at least.

 

Can't say I agree with all that. Off the Ground was recorded pretty much all live with the same band. I find it flows a bit better than Chaos. I always feel "A Certain Softness" sounds SO different from the rest of the album, like it was recorded for a compilation or something that was never used, so he put it on the album.

I will agree that "New" is kind of all over the place. Although it tends to work on vinyl better as you have a side break between the song New and Appreciate which couldn't BE any more different from each other if he tried.

 

I'd say songs like Winedark Open Sea, Golden Earth Girl, and the Costello songs all sound very different from the other songs that have that live feel with the band.

I wonder what we're gonna get with this new one. He's been working on it for so long, so it's possible that his sound and style changed over the course. Although he negated that with MAF, since he wound up re-recording a lot of instruments and gave it what I can only assume is more cohesive and similar feel than if he hadn't.

 

Well different strokes.

 

Off The Ground > PS Love Me Do

 

Everything ever recorded in the history of music > PS Love Me Do.

BTW, is there a press-release yet?

 

I disagree:

PS Love Me Do (Studio version) > PS Love Me Do (Live version)

 

Be careful Mike, some folks get very touchy saying that there might be a second producer involved in the making of this album

 

What a bizarre thing for someone to get upset about!?

 

Just Don't talk about it okay?
It's very emotional for me.
*listens to Bip Bop for comfort*

 

I love Off The Ground. It's no classic but it's a fine album. It just suffers from boring, bloated production and a certain blandness to a number of the tracks.

 

Interesting review :

1:
Suffers from boring, bloated production

2:
A certain blandness to a number of tracks

3:
you love it!

 

I think the production is OK, as opposed to over-produced records like "Flowers..." or "Press to Play".

The main problem with "Off the Ground" is that the songs are not very good. "Flowers..." has a number of nice songs buried under layers of keyboards. OTG songs have breathing space but this only goes to reveal that they are quite generic and uninspired IMO.

 

Hey hey hey, what can I say! I'm a glutton for punishment, baby!

 

I liked 'Press To Play' when it came out and like it still. I like the single mixes of several songs much better than the CD versions ("Only Love Remains" "Angry" "It's Not True").
As for 'Flowers In The Dirt', I was a huge fan of that. A couple of sleepy moments aside (like the droning "Motor Of Love"), it was a quaint and poppy album.
'Off The Ground' was a big favorite of mine but I found myself liking the songs on CD singles better than several of the album songs. I preferred "Style Style" "Keep Coming Back" "Long Leather Coat" "I Can't Imagine" "Kicked Around No More" over "C'mon People" and "Winedark Open Sea" for example. Still, a very listenable release that I have in my car currently.

Looking forward to what the new batch of songs sound like. I just hope he doesn't try to be too cute with that gargly 'Fireman' voice where he tries to sound hip or cool. That act is old for me. He's freakin' 70-something...not 20-ish.

 

Curious to know what songs you are talking about when you describe a try-hard gargly Paul? Certainly doesn’t make me think of any of his songs...