Paul McCartney: Live Kisses

Paul McCartney

Live Kisses

Eagle Vision/Shock

Paul McCartney’s Kisses On The Bottom album is not that bad. I know that’s not the best opening sentence of a review – but I feel it’s the truth. What is bad about it is the title. It’s ludicrously bad. Awful. Embarrassing. The latest in a long line of examples of the sort of Uncle Albert putting butter-in-the-pie shenanigans-as-self-sabotage that Macca clearly delights in – a case could be made for him as the self-aware ironist of Dad(a)-Rock. But it’s a far easier case to just see him as childishly trying to forever hang on to the last vestiges of some hippie twaddle. A shame given he’s clearly a genius and should be everybody’s hero. But hey, if you embrace the madness and the imbecility/senility of some of Paul’s bravest/dumbest moves you can fix any holes where the rain gets in.

I tried to like Kisses On The Bottom (the album) because, well, it was always going to be too easy to not like it. And it’s a smart-enough album for Sir Paul to be making in this day and age. But it’s also – for the most part – deeply unremarkable when it comes down to it.

So here for Live Kisses a session is captured where Paul attempts to be a sort of raised-on-music-hall Frank Sinatra, beautifully shot in black’n’white, backed by Diana Krall and a few other star players. It’s all so comfortable and dreamy but, again, ultimately unremarkable. The sound and picture quality are stunning – but what good is good sound if the actual sounds are not ones you need to hear. And that’s the problem here – a dressed-up/churched-up package with a lovely booklet/cover/design and a generous program – so generous as to bore to the level that might bring on (all too quickly on repeat views) the snores.

He shoots. He misses. It’s a bit like that with Macca these days – has been that way largely across the last 30 years of course. And it’s a shame he’ll never listen to my advice and make McCartney III and bow out. The correct thing to do. Instead we get things like this. Which you only need if you really think you need them. And you know what? Even if you do – you don’t. That’s the honest truth here. That’s how it breaks down. You should of course tell him – and this – to Kiss Off.

(But you read this to the end – so there’s a chance you’re still going to buy this. Well jolly good show, son. Hands across the water and all of that, then).

Joey

Sounds like a good Xmas present for my mum.
Ellen Fonner

Doesn’t sound like this reviewer knows much about jazz, or likes jazz all that much. Whether or not you like the album’s title — and I don’t see what’s wrong with it, it’s funny and memorable — the album itself is lovely, quiet, spare, and not at all what I was expecting from Macca. A nice little surprise.

I’m on board with McCartney III. Wish he would do that and soon. But why should he bow out? He just gave 5 or 6 concerts in the US and Canada and got great reviews. You are WAY WAY too hard on Macca here. But that’s been the story of his career for 40 years since he left the Beatles. Why are the reviews of everything he does so damn mean spirited? Reminds me of how nasty the early reviews of Ram were in 1971, and now it’s recognized as brilliant. Well guess what? RAM WAS BRILLIANT ALL ALONG. It just took awhile for certain reviewers marching in lock step to die off or retire, and for a younger crowd of reviewers to listen without prejudice.

McCartney II was savaged by the critics and now all of sudden people are singing its praises. Everything McCartney produces results in the same small circle of over-40 white male rock-oriented critics tearing him apart — just as that same insular group of critics praises anything Bob Dylan does, no matter how lame (witness the positive reviews of that mess of an album, The Tempest).

McCartney’s works since the late 1990s have ranged from good (Flaming Pie) to great (Chaos and Creation, Electric Arguments). But it’ll take another 40 years, I guess, for “the critics” to come around. You’ve been sabotaging his work for decades, though, so why stop now.