Music Disc Reviews

Memory opens with a disarmingly sweet mandolin - and Paul's comfy voice, up-close-and-personal in the sound mix - inviting everybody to "Dance Tonight," until some breezy electric guitars take us to that "Ever Present Past." Then comes his patented peripatetic bass on "See Your Sunshine," which leads to the Venus-and-Martian rock show of "Only Mama Knows." Yes, rock. Unlike last time out, McCartney lets loose on several tracks here, even summoning a Little bit of Richard. And there's more, including the delightfully skipping piano line of "Mr. Bellamy" and the suitably thrown-back rockabilly of "That Was Me."

This is the kind of material that helps make Memory a solid step up from the melancholy Chaos. Indeed, a simple track like "Dance Tonight" might seem like filler at first, but its direct charm isn't just McCartney-like - it's just like McCartney, his homemade gem from 1970. Too bad, then, that elsewhere Paul often makes things too busy, as if he's marking the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love by seasoning things with too much Pepper.

To wit: The chamber intro and outro for the hard-driving "Only Mama Knows" aren't just unnecessary but out of character. Also superfluous are the intro and coda to "Mr. Bellamy." Then there are the little abstract breaks in "Vintage Clothes" and the vocoder-like chorale in "Feet in the Clouds." It's all interesting but, at the same time, it's all too much - especially when McCartney sings in that last track: "But I find it very very very very very very hard / Yes I find it very very very very very very hard." Verily, verily, he says unto us!

Furthermore, whereas the Abbey Road medley included 8 songs clocking in at 16:14, the new medley takes almost exactly the same time - 16:22 - to cover only 5 songs. The main culprit here is the nearly 5-minute "House of Wax," which not only is too long for a medley number but also doesn't adhere to the theme of reminiscing. The 3-minute "You Tell Me," in both length and subject matter, would have been a better fit.