Chaos and Creation

I was chuffed about Paul McCartney's new album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard because Jason Falkner plays on a couple of tracks, but I wasn't prepared to hear a McCartney album that not only boasts some of his best songwriting in fifteen years, but also has a relevant sound. I've listened to it all week, and I don't think there's a bum track on the whole thing.

In my opinion, this is his best album since the first new release I bought by him, 1989's Flowers in the Dirt, on which he collaborated with Elvis Costello. On most tracks on Chaos, McCartney plays all the instruments himself. The album was produced by Nigel Godrich, who has produced for Radiohead and Beck, and in this case, I think that Godrich not only kept the production fresh, he took the role that Costello did on the 1989 album: he became someone who could tell McCartney "No:"

Producer and artist particularly clashed on "Riding to Vanity Fair," which McCartney brought in as a fast song and Godrich kept trying to slow down.

"There were one or two moments on the album when I had to think to myself,
'You know, I could just fire this guy,'" McCartney said.

Damn good thing he didn't. I think McCartney has realized that he needs a foil, and that the best work of his career has come when he has one. It also seems that he's coming to terms with the uneven quality of his output over the past thirty years, and is genuinely striving to do better:

I decided to lay it on the line for myself and challenge myself and say, 'You're going to make a good album here.' It was a good motivator.

That was obvious from the first time that I heard the lead single, "Fine Line," which was admittedly in a Lexus commercial (I am so not their target demo). Like all his best songs, the verse melody sounds like something you've heard and loved your entire life.

The face of the CD itself features McCartney's name as an ambigram, script that reads the same upside down. There doesn't seem to be a credit on the CD to whoever did this one, but here are some sites with some good ones:

• Punya's Visual Wordplay Gallery
• Ambigram.com
• Kevin Pease