Paul McCartney—The Boys of Dungeon Lane

★★★★

Paul McCartney introduced The Boys of Dungeon Lane, his twentieth solo album, with “Days We Left Behind,” a wistful glance back at his formative years in Liverpool. The choice of lead single intentionally framed its accompanying album as a memoir, a notable shift from an artist so obsessed with the ever-present now that he titled an album NEW when he was 71 years old

McCartney is now thirteen years older than he was when he released the spangly NEW, which now feels like a relic from a peculiar era. Back in 2013, he still yearned to be part of the pop mainstream despite his advancing age, teaming up with four separate young producers in hopes of one more Top Ten hit. The hushed “Days We Left Behind” announced that he left all that gleam and gloss behind. The acoustic arrangement left no place for McCartney to hide, letting his tender vocal quiver be the focus of attention. That fragility is evident throughout The Boys of Dungeon Lane, where McCartney chooses to write songs that accommodate his diminished range rather than disguising his years.
It’s a move that meshes with the album’s stated concept of McCartney wandering through his back pages. There is a reflective undercurrent flowing through The Boys of Dungeon Lane, one that surfaces in the unadorned “Down South,” a clear-eyed account of his early days with George Harrison, and on “Salesman Saint,” a minor-key waltz that plays upon the story of his parents’ marriage. Even with a wailing big band decorating the latter, these are understated moments, unlike the jubilant nostalgia of “Home to Us,” a duet with Ringo Starr designed to get by on charm.

Despite these forthright snippets of autobiography, McCartney isn’t particularly interested in recounting his past in detail. These songs are but one thread on The Boys of Dungeon Lane, interwoven with love songs, character sketches, and trips from on high. All these are familiar themes, as are the song forms. He stitches together full-throated rockers, incandescent pop, romantic flights, music hall ditties, and plaintive folk, decorating each with layered harmonies and the odd art-rock flourish, making sure to shift the tempo whenever momentum threatens to lag.

The construction of the record camouflages the familiarity of the components, particularly upon the first few listens of The Boys of Dungeon Lane. The album opens gently, with McCartney speak-singing the verse of “As You Lie There” over a plucked acoustic, lulling the listener with its gentle sway before crashing into a screamed chorus. This left-field hook is the only sucker punch on the album, arriving early enough to indicate the record won’t quite follow the expected path. That’s often true. “Mountain Top” collapses into a concentrated psychedelic coda, and the middle eight of “Never Know” percolates with interlaced harmonies, eccentric choices that are balanced by the precision of the propulsive “Lost Horizon” and candy-coated “Ripples on a Pond.” When McCartney strips away this modern finery for old-timey ballroom pop, he offers two variations on the same essential story: he rallies on “Life Can Be Hard,” trying his best to believe that love can carry through the times when there’s no food in the larder, then flipping the script for “Momma Gets By,” illustrating a scenario where a wife has to carry the household with no contribution from her layabout husband.

“Momma Gets By” concludes the album on a haunting, bittersweet note, providing a fitting bookend to “As You Lie There,” a song where a crush curdles into a consuming obsession. In both cases, McCartney is delivering something that’s explicitly the opposite of what The Boys of Dungeon Lane seemed to promise. They’re character sketches that let McCartney explore complex feelings, an ambiguity that also surfaces on “Days We Left Behind,” which concludes on a note of acceptance: “nothing stays the same/And no one needs to cry.” That’s a sentiment that suits McCartney, who has always felt the pull of the past as he looked forward to the future. He’s the one who pushed the Beatles into art-rock, and he’s also the one who yearned for the group to get back into dingy clubs. These two instincts fuel The Boys of Dungeon Lane, an album whose blend of sepia-stained memories and vibrant present feels authentically and satisfyingly McCartney.