Memory Almost Full
****1/2
There is an obvious difference between looking through a photo album with a friend and reading that friend’s diary as they watch. For all its critical acclaim, Paul McCartney’s 2005 album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard left me uncomfortably close to what the man was going through personally, yet there he was, challenging me to look at and read the words anyway.
By contrast, Memory Almost Full—the first release by Starbucks’ Hear Music label—has Paul inviting us on a journey through the past and bringing it together with what it has become. Though he recorded much of it before Chaos, the succession of the two provides the effect of having arrived from turmoil to a much happier place. He sounds weary but glad as he opens with “Dance Tonight,” telling us all there’ll be no moping over worries present or past. And throughout, it’s as though he has invited us to share his fondest and saddest memories, a gesture we could easily interpret as letting us join him on the couch after needing some space for his complicated personal life the past nine years. You can hear the smile in his voice when he relays that sentiment in the hook-laden “Ever Present Past.”
McCartney’s trademark silly love songs find their way alongside heavy introspective works, including an impressive five-song autobiographical medley. He sings carefully at times, but with arena bravado at others, and all of the different periods of his career seem to be emulated musically at some point.
The end effect is visual, moving and rewarding for those of us who never seem to get the album we want from Sir Paul. And tear-jerkers such as “The End of the End” reminds us that the time is not far off when we won’t be able to sit and flip through a photo album together. Thank goodness the warning comes with a smile. - Dennis Mitchell