Paul McCartney's best album... and you have never even heard of it, let alone heard it

Paul McCartney's best album... and you have never even heard of it, let alone heard it..,

partly because it was recorded under the name of his alias/alter ego The Fireman.

The album? "Electric Arguments".

It even includes a worship song...hear it, and the rest of the album here

P:S I bet you have never even heard of The Monkees' best song either. Late to the party? It's  here.

Their second best that you have also never heard of includes Neil Young on guitar It's here, and I hear it as a prayer.

Both  cowritten by Carole King, and both from the same album.

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On to reviews of  Electric Arguments by Paul McCartney AKA The Fireman:

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"a staggering collection of timeless adventures that touch on the best aspects of today's more left-field sounds". Clash, link

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Electric Arguments is the best Paul Album he's released in the last twenty years, and no one has listened to it:

Electric Arguments by The Fireman (Paul McCartney and Youth working together) is a top tier album for me. I think The Fireman have a bad wrap because of their first two albums which were not Paul's standard kind of thing.

The songs near the end are a little more abstract (it is still "the fireman") but the first ten songs are as good as his seventies material for me!

Paul played all the instruments and vocals, similarly to how he did on Chaos and Creation. It's basically what I thought of as "McCartney III" before MIII actually came out. link

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Electric Arguments will go down as one of the most eclectic and exhilarating albums in Macca’s whole extraordinary canon. link

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 The proof is in the listening: this is Paul McCartney finally “getting back,” serving notice that he’s back, with all of the adventurousness he had with those other Liverpool lads – and reminding us that “Lonely Hearts Club Band” stuff was his idea, after all. link

Though he may never acquire the same ‘cool’ credentials of John, the existence of The Fireman indicates that he may have conceded there is nothing left for him to prove. link

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I'll be brief in this, my first Debaserian time, by saying right away that McCartney has rarely recorded and released such a "modern", immediate work, rich with the most diverse sounds and musical cues.

If it has always been said, and partly rightly so, that McCartney's music needs careful production to give its best (which often, unfortunately, had to make up for a lack of ideas), this time we can enjoy the former Beatle without frills and in the midst of a very happy, instinctive, creative moment, finally far from market demands, which Paul too, too often, has let himself be influenced by.

The album consists of 13 tracks which almost perfectly, in my very personal opinion, fulfill the main task of music, which is to live better, forgetting reality as much as possible during those minutes.

The sounds, instruments, and atmospheres you hear are numerous (violins, flutes, mandolins, synthesizers, and percussion of all kinds, etc.) but well-blended in this work, truly "multiethnic" without ever becoming an incoherent jumble. Rather, it is the coherence of the whole that leaves an impression of "slow-release" compactness at the end, truly rare for McCartney. link

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MCCARTNEY'S ON FIRE!

John would have been proud, for it sounds more like a john-esque project then one you would expect to hear from McCartney. Not to say that I was not an immense fan of Paul's melodic, hard driving pop songs. For I was. Just that he hasn't seemed to be able to pull those out in several years (decades?). Just as early critics of the Beatles marked Paul as a great R & B singer, this recording shows that "the Blues" is his forte..Sometimes it's just the right person and just the right combination. And this is it. No, this is not a happy super pop album, it is eery night music, sometimes dark. But it is music at it's best. The way McCartney needs to be, more relaxed and natural. Superb.

Listening to these songs I hear influences from other bands; U2, Peter Gabriel, CCR, Beck, Ozark Mtn. Daredevils, the Mars Volta, , Enigma, Jon Anderson. And yet, all of these artists were influenced by the Beatles. So, in essensce he is only influencing himself!

,,"Sing the Changes" is immediately my favorite and could easily be a top 40 song (if the verses were cut a bit). Compelling sermon like delivery with a nice guitar riff bringing everything together.

In "Traveling Light" McCartney puts on his Peter Gabriel impression, playing flute and singing with a low Peteresque vocal.

"Sun Is Shining" just has that orb like feeling you get with some U2 songs. Very U2-ish.

"Dance 'Til We're High" is another one of my favorites. For some reason, this one reminds me of early / mid 80's college/Indi radio. It also has tinges of Genesis...

And, finally, the coda "Don't Stop Running". I have been a Beatles fan for over 40 years. I have listened to McCartney for....ages... and yet, I have never heard him sing like this. He sounds like Jon Anderson (of Yes). And... it works! And with an interesting harpsichord like sound... just everything on this album is a hodge podge of sounds and instruments... and it is never boring.

All in all, I love this album. This is the best thing McCartney has done since the mid 70's. But don't expect it to sound like the mid 70's. It sounds like 2008. It's great!

To quote McCartney "The Fireman takes your hand and leads you through the blaze to places you didn't know you wanted to go."

link

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Electric Arguments will go down as one of the most eclectic and exhilarating albums in Macca’s whole extraordinary canon. link

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. The results are still experimental in nature and despite the hooks it is still very much an avant-garde experience. It has a Radiohead feel to it but only in mood and atmosphere.More proof that some of Paul’s best recorded work was in the last 20 years of his career. link

.  Creative gem! certainly  a true gem and perhaps will be remembered as one of Paul’s best works, at his most creative and instinctive. link

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