Paul McCartney Rapidshare "Memory Almost Full (Deluxe Version) 320Kbps" Rapidshare Music Video MV/試聴 視聴 mp3 PV 動画 映画 歌詞/뮤직 비디오/동영상

What's most remarkable about Paul McCartney's inaugural album for Starbucks' Hear Music imprint is its cross-promotional hoo-ha. To win it space on his demographic's overloaded cerebral hard drives, Memory Almost Full will play all day June 5th in every Starbucks in the world, in ten of which caffeinated fans will send birthday greetings to the ex-Beatle, who turns sixty-five on June 18th. Nevertheless, by McCartney's recent standards, the album justifies the pop eccentricity he pursues so imperturbably.

"Dance Tonight" is so simplistic it could make you shudder, but repeated plays soon implant its strummed hook, and the rest of the album establishes that the party it sets up is a setup -- a bit of Eden before a fall that comes immediately with the peppy but regretful "Ever Present Past," about all the time a sixty-four-year-old has already wasted on work instead of love. "Gratitude" is an astonishingly unrecriminating romantic fare-thee-well from a guy who is going through a bitter divorce. "Vintage Clothes" and "Feet in the Clouds" incarnate his nostalgia and whimsy with some wit and considerable musical invention. And the final tracks make clear that boyish Paulie conceived this record as the old man he is. "End of the End" lays out funeral instructions that include jokes, songs, "stories of old" and assurances of an afterlife not all his contemporaries believe will transpire. And "Nod Your Head" appears to advise aging lovers on their beds of pain. Not simplistic at all.

Paul McCartney "Memory Almost Full (Deluxe Version) 320Kbps" Rapidshare "Dance Tonight" Rapidshare Music Video MV/試聴 視聴 mp3 PV 動画 映画 歌詞/뮤직 비디오/동영상

Nothing like a messy divorce to get the creative juices flowing, eh? Nothing like being accused of flailing wildly at your ex-missus with a broken wine glass to put decades of whimsical, milkman-tickling, cred-killing songsmithery into sharp relief, wouldn’t you say? Clear the decks, dig deep into those reservoirs of marital pain and vomit out your own Blood On The Tracks for the new millennium. Paul McCartney? Oh that shit’s dark.

Except... he isn’t really, is he? At all. We’d like to think of Sir Paul inwardly seething with untapped rage as he simpers, whistles and generally mugs his way through this tootling, flatulent ditty, but he almost definitely isn’t. The only hint of tragedy is in the video, where he can be found wandering round his deserted mansion with an inexplicable procession of ghosts and Gareth out of The Office (playing a milkman - huzzah!), mandolin nestled somewhere under his aged, cloying puppy-dog features.

As the song fades to a well-deserved close, it’s impossible to shake the lingering image of him sitting crumpled in a lavishly upholstered chair, strings busted on his mandolin from the unbearable strain of having to play out such depth-plumbing inanity, strumming out a few wretched chords, lump rising in his throat as he drunkenly hollers after the memory of his old flame: “Heather! I love you, you fucking whore!!”

The walls of his desolate manor echo back their mocking response.

But yeah, it’s a toe-tapper, alright.