Sir Paul releases new album

McCartney too shows he still has the gift in this album, the 13 tracks of which were each written and recorded in one day, over the period of a year. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

PARIS - PAUL McCartney followed up this weekend's 40th anniversary of the mythical Beatles' White album with the release on Monday of Electric Arguments, a new album produced under the name The Fireman.

This is 66-year-old Sir Paul's third jointly-made album with Martin 'Youth' Glover, 47-year-old former bassist for Killing Joke and the producer behind Urban Hymns, the 1997 hit album by The Verve.

The duo released their first album, Strawberries Ocean Ships Forest, incognito in 1993, before the press revealed McCartney and Glover were behind the experimental project - which they followed up with Rushes in 1998.

Despite the use of unusual sound effects in Electric Arguments, the third album can no longer be described as 'experimental' as it draws on traditional song formats and sometimes features McCartney's vocals.

The result is pure McCartney - and, critics say, pretty good McCartney.

The opening track 'Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight' recalls 'Helter Skelter' - one of the most ambitious pieces on the White album - but in a slower version.

The album also underlines McCartney's talent for melodies, which he sweetly churns out in Two Magpies, Sing The Changes (in the style of his second group, the Wings), Sun is Shining or Dance 'til We're High.

Lifelong Passion blends George Harrison-style ragas from India and the synthetic pop of the seminal 1980s German group Kraftwerk.

After a lacklustre track, Is This Love?, the album moves forward to become truly experimental and incorporates electro-dance.

McCartney too shows he still has the gift in this album, the 13 tracks of which were each written and recorded in one day, over the period of a year.

His solo album Memory Almost Full (2007) had less good moments than this latest project, while Chaos And Creation in The Backyard (2005) is still listed as a McCartney classic.

But it is still as a Beatle that McCartney has created the most buzz.

Fans of the Fab Four last week learnt that a previously unreleased experimental track from 1967, Carnival of Light, could be made public.

The other living Beatle, Ringo Starr, as well as the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison, still need to give the green light to the project.

McCartney and Starr also lived to witness another monumental event last weekend - Vatican praise for the legendary group that once fell out of favour with the Holy See.

Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano marked the anniversary of the White album with a laudatory article on the Beatles, whose frontman Lennon once famously the Fab Four 'more popular than Jesus'. -- AFP