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It hardly needs saying, but let’s say it anyway: Paul McCartney owes nobody anything. It’s difficult to name anyone else, alive or dead, who has contributed more to collective human happiness. With that in mind, you can’t help rooting for him, willing him on to produce a late-period masterpiece because you know he has it in him. Sadly, while The Boys Of Dungeon Lane certainly has its moments, it is not quite that record.
First single Days We Left Behind boded well. A gentle ode to early times with John Lennon, it suits the torn and frayed side of McCartney’s voice perfectly. There’s also a very moving tribute to his parents’ marriage in the closing Momma Gets By with a simple but beautifully direct chorus of ‘She loves him’ set against swelling strings. Salesman Saint, also about his parents’ lives, has a lot going for it, too, with a lyric about getting on with things, and a horn arrangement that wouldn’t have shamed Glenn Miller. We Two has a pleasing lilt and finds McCartney’s immortal melodic gifts come into focus for that dreamed-of-you-chorus.
The problem elsewhere is that, on the whole, the songs just aren’t memorable enough. It’s all perfectly pleasant, and far from terrible, but the much-heralded Paul ’n’ Ringo duet Home To Us is an occasion that deserves a better tune. The same applies to the Fool On The Hill flutes on Never Know. Nice to hear them, but they’d benefit from a more robust setting.
Opening stalker anthem As You Lie There begins interestingly, with McCartney giving it a bit of spoken-word about a woman he saw once who he hopes is thinking about him, but loses something when it heads up-tempo – a move that also mars Lost Horizon and Come Inside. Again, McCartney is entitled to have a bit of a rock out if he fancies it, but he sounds more at home on lilting tracks like Life Can Be Hard or First Star Of The Night.
Perhaps the shortcomings are best exemplified by Down South. Another tale from Macca’s youth where he and a pal – George, apparently – hitch around the country talking of their future, it has potential and certainly sounds heartfelt, but it would have benefited from a bit more polishing in terms of the lyric and the basic arrangement.
We might point the finger at producer Andrew Watt – could he have taken a leaf out of Nigel Godrich’s book, someone who apparently pushed McCartney hard during the production of 2005’s excellent Chaos And Creation In The Backyard? Then again, it’s a brave man who’d dare to tell possibly the world’s greatest songwriter that he could do better.
