“I do often wonder if I’m just writing about the past,” Paul McCartney has said of his new album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane. “But then I think, how can you write about anything else?”
Yes, one of the greatest living songwriters is certainly in a nostalgic mood on his 20th solo album. Inspired by a childhood spent growing up in postwar Liverpool, along with his earliest days knocking about with Beatles bandmates Ringo Starr, John Lennon and George Harrison, this is a lovely addition to an astonishing and varied career. Not to mention, one of his most insightful records.
There’s less of the technical showmanship we heard on 2020’s McCartney III, which opened with an extraordinary display of blues guitarmanship on “Long Tailed Winter Bird”. But with help from 35-year-old producer Andrew Watt (whose other recent credits include the Stones, Elton John and the late Ozzy Osbourne), it’s McCartney’s songwriting that sounds particularly rejuvenated.
He writes about a schoolboy crush as though it were yesterday on “As You Lie There”, mesmerised by the thought of his unrequited love in her bedroom. Don’t mistake nostalgia for twee, either: this is a heady slice of Sgt Pepper’s psychedelic rock, replete with reverb-soaked guitars, silky drum beats and McCartney’s distorted yowls: “Do I ever cross your mind/ As you lie there?” It’s a far cry from the disaster that was “Fuh You”, from the 2018 album Egypt Station, a misguided and creepy attempt (blame producer Ryan Tedder) to make a “modern” pop hit. No, “As You Lie There” is a brilliant opening salvo and, dare I say it, quite sexy for an octogenarian.
There’s plenty of variation across the record, from the trippy “Mountain Top” – inspired by McCartney’s love of the Glastonbury Festival – to the romantic pop of “Ripples in a Pond”, which he dedicated to his wife, Nancy Shevell, during an intimate playback earlier this month at Abbey Road studios. Beatles fans will find much to love in “Down South”. It’s a blessed relief that this is not another innuendo-laden misfire, but rather a jaunty rock number about McCartney’s hitchhiking adventures with late bandmate Harrison: “It was a good way to get to know you before we learned ‘Twist and Shout’,” he sings.
“Lost Horizon” is a blues-soaked jam about the unassuming sounds – “laughter from a children’s playground … the chimes of a clock ticking on the table-top” – that whisk him back to another time. You can’t even begrudge him the teeth-grittingly cheesy “Home to Us”, his first duet with Starr – a disjointed pub piano singalong on which both artists sound as though they’re a few pints down. It’s just fun, and silly, like many of the earliest Beatles songs. Across the record, there’s a playfulness, as though he’s remembered exactly why it is that he got into all of this in the first place.
When McCartney headlined Glastonbury in 2022, his voice discernibly cracking in places, some wondered if he might soon be headed for retirement. But as evidenced on his triumphant 2024 tour, and now on The Boys of Dungeon Lane, he’s capable of being as electrifying and inspired as he was in his twenties. And as charming as the record is, it’s also another terrific reminder of the artist’s remarkable staying power.