PAUL MCCARTNEY - Memory Almost Full Review

Paul McCartney isn't about to let a little thing like a contentious divorce send him on a bleak confessional bender. He opens Memory Almost Full, his 21st solo album, in fancy-free fashion, pulling out the mandolin and inviting pals over to ''Dance Tonight'' (an alternative gala to Dancing With the Stars?). Still, now that he's 64, even rock's most sanguine superstar is ultimately drifting toward weightier thoughts on mortality and the passing of time. Many of these Memory pieces have Macca taking stock of a pretty cool life that ''went by in a flash'' or, in ''End of the End,'' serenely anticipating his own final curtain. It's his version of Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind...if Time Out of Mind had cutthroat pop instincts and whistling solos....full text Forget the current Sgt Pepper nostalgia fest. It may be 40 years ago today, but the real story is hidden towards the end of Paul McCartney’s umpteenth solo record. The End of the End nods to a Beatles classic with its title and setting – it appears as part of a medley, not quite Abbey Road standard but by no means poor – but that isn’t its significance. Sir Thumbs-Up has written a rather lovely song about death’s inevitable approach, a subject this venerable pensioner has had too much recent experience with....full text If Paul McCartney had retired a decade ago, he would still have had one of the fullest and more memorable lives in modern music.

But McCartney is clearly one of those guys who don't know when to quit. And thank heaven for that.

At an age when virtually all his contemporaries have settled into retirement (or at least irrelevance), the 64-year-old ex-Beatle keeps going like the Energizer Bunny of pop....full text