Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full
It’s hard to imagine, with all the stuff Paul McCartney’s been through in the past ten years - and I trust that I don’t have to elaborate on that - that he could turn out a cheerful classic album like this. It’s also his first U.S. release published by someone other than Capitol Records, the Beatles’ home label Stateside since the beginning; this one was released by a new label started up by, of all people, Starbucks. Yes, the coffee chain. But don’t let any of the above distract you from the fact that this is Sir Paul’s best offering in ten years.
The first three songs, “Dance Tonight”, “Ever Present Past” and “Your Sunshine”, are a triple-threat reminded of why the man’s considered one of the finest pop songsmiths on the planet, even four decades after most of his lifelong listeners first made his acquaintance. They’re classic specimens of McCarthy’s musical craftsmanship, and they’re just so cheerful that it’s impossible not to crack a smile. “Mister Bellamy” and “Vintage Clothes” also fall into this category, despite the former feeling just a little bit like a follow-up to “Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey” - this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
He also proves that he’s still fully capable of rocking out on numbers like “Only Mama Knows” and “That Was Me”, which have both quickly become a couple of my McCartney favorites. “Only Mama Knows” starts out with a string section, but after that brief intro, becomes pure rock ‘n’ roll, while “That Was Me” is an almost obligatory humorous travelogue of McCartney’s past, from his childhood to a little gig in a place called the Cavern and beyond.
Not everything is sunshine on Memory Almost Full, either; things slow down and become more introspective with “You Tell Me” and “End Of The End”. In “End Of The End”, McCartney basically lays down how he’d like to be remembered when he’s gone, a sobering thought to be sure, but it’s also a song that’s virtually destined to be played over his own obituary. There are also just a couple of hints of bitterness at recent events in his life, and the media’s attention to them: he sings “I’m not coming down / no matter what you say / I like it up here anyway” on the seemingly cheerful “Mister Bellamy”. ‘Nuff said.
What makes the whole endeavour that much more impressive is that McCartney has joined the ranks of the musical hermit crabs with Memory Almost Full. With the exception of any overdubbed orchestral sweeteners, the ex-Beatle literally plays and sings everything himself. You’d have to figure that if anyone in the world would be able to pull something like that off, Paul McCartney would be it. The result is his best album in about ten years - it’s pure Paul, and it’s intensely admirable both for the great music and the pure class of the guy making it. A simply outstanding album.
- Dance Tonight (2:52)
- Ever Present Past (2:54)
- See Your Sunshine (3:17)
- Only Mama Knows (4:17)
- You Tell Me (3:15)
- Mister Bellamy (3:39)
- Gratitude (3:17)
- Vintage Clothes (2:22)
- That Was Me (2:38)
- Feet In The Clouds (3:24)
- House Of Wax (4:59)
- End Of The End (2:51)
- Nod Your Head (1:55)
Released by: Hear Music
Release date: 2007
Total running time: 41:40
Pressed in a limited run of 1,000 copies, the soundtrack CD from TNT’s troubled two-season wonder Witchblade is just a few years late to the party, but no less welcome for the wait. (Then again, any kind of DVD release for Witchblade is also long overdue.) Even with the CD being confined largely to cues from a small number of first season episodes, it presents a wildly different style of music from Goldsmith’s well-worn Stargate repertoire. Heavy on ethnic instruments, pounding percussion, distorted guitar, eerie synth pads and trippy tastes of prog-rock, Goldsmith’s Witchblade music fits well alongside the show’s preoccupation with classic rock (excerpts of Blue Oyster Cult and Jefferson Airplane weren’t uncommon, and when the Witchblade itself finally spoke in season 2, it spoke with the voice of Grace Slick). 
Usually when you think of the genres “psychedelic” and “Christian”, it’s not in the same sentence. However, that’s exactly what the band Yum Yum Children was trying to accomplish. Recorded in 1996, this album sounds like a slab of lost 70’s rock just recently getting unearthed for the first time.
I barely remember the lavish 1979 British/U.S. co-production of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. I seem to remember being hyped up about it (as I was about most anything that had to do with space), seeing a little bit of it, and then my mom deciding unilaterally that this miniseries was Not For Me. And oddly enough, I haven’t seen it in its entirety since, despite it being on DVD these days. (That’s a gap in my SF TV knowledge I need to correct one of these days, come to think of it.) But boy, do I remember the music. I had already seen Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers (and, of course, Star Wars) by this point, but The Martian Chronicles clearly had Music From The Future. With its futuristic synth sweeps giving it a foothold in the new wave sound while its orchestral components were firmly tied to the disco-fied ’70s, The Martian Chronicles’ music is bold, brassy, memorable, and that spacey element pushes it just far enough across the line to make it sound, musically, a bit like a science fiction version of Dallas.
And yet, for all of these things that should be fatal blows, the music from The Martian Chronicles works quite well in its own little continuum. The late British composer Stanley Myers (who composed, among a great many other things, a very early Doctor Who adventure) did a great job of devising very adaptable themes and motifs, and then developing those fully. It may come across as a bit cheesy according to modern sensibilities, but it’s a musical time capsule of sorts, and one that I enjoy returning to quite a bit.