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"Listen
to the song they sing, awakening."
An English major's review of Driving Rain.
By Prudence Personified of Podunk, NY
The album Driving Rain: initial reaction [thud]. Dang thing is full of songs so strong they could crush beer cans with their pinky finger. All vehicles driven on this record have eight cylinders. There is no word in English for the perfect marriage of melody and lyrics. That quality is rare in the first place--it often takes a two person collaboration to achieve it--but McCartney makes it seem easy, so that the rest of the presentation of a song--vocals, arrangement--can be enjoyed in the absolute certainty that the whole structure is as sound as the house Janet Reno's mother built.
The theme of the album is the survival of an ordeal, and basking in the sunshine of release. You recognize the imagery, of course. McCartney is back in the sunshine again. But the territory he had to travel to get there is mentioned regularly, the shadow still hovers: "Don't want to walk that lonely road again"; "All I want is to tell me you're going to take it away"; "Letting sunshine in the darkest places when / I'v been going there again"; "Please remember this/ After a time it's through"; "You can't imagine just what I've been going through/ I wouldn't wish it on a soul much less on you"; "I watched the sun go down with some sorrow"; "You give me power to get out of bed/When in the morning I'm feeling dead"; "Until the cares of my life blow away": all of Back in the Sunshine Again; "If I don't have you, I'll be feeling blue"; and lastly but NOT leastly, "Rinse the raindrops from your head." Never, in short, has a man climbed out of a long dark tunnel so gracefully, or celebrated his return to the light so vigorously. As I listed those lyric snippets above, his voice will have sung them into your mental ears, full of strength, warmth, rhythm, guts, and joy. From personal experience I can tell you that emerging from depression requires your full participation. There are potions and prayers that can help, but it's the human will in all its wily strength that wins that battle.
Song by song, it goes like this:
Lonely Road
Some sort of Harley of a song, irresistible driving
momentum, a road song for escapees, with blue refrain, sung in full blistering
Delta blues mode.
From a Lover
to a Friend
Fine change of pace, with a structure somewhere
between a collage and a dialogue between three parts of a man's phyche trying
to figure out what to do next: the philosophical wonderer (And when the time
comes 'round...), the hurt child (all I want is to tell me you're going to take
it away), and the resolved adult (let me love again).
She's Given Up
Talking
Classic McCartney short story in verse.The child
heroine alienated from society, and simultaneously integrated energetically
with her family. With splendid backing sounds conveying things gone awry, the
eerie, the off-center and out of control-- and in such a strange place: a girl
child.
Driving
Rain
Great collaboration between a rocker and a romantic
troubadour ("Nothing's broken when it's softly spoken and walking slowly down
the lane."). He's rocking out to celebrate having driven "straight to the heart
of everything right."
If You Only Knew
Having survived the hurricane in the 'Vette,
the lovers take a ride through the park in a horse-drawn carriage. Showers of
audible sunshine and trilling bells accompany them, mixed with the drums of
doom escaped. A moment of rest before picking up speed again.
Tiny Bubble
Are this man's powers of invention at thinking
up new and convincing ways to say "I love you" inexhaustible? Apparently. Nice
gentle rocking rhythm and tempo, edgy underdone guitar to complement the glowing
vocal.
Magic
Big but simple production sound for an incantatory
but upbeat elegy--it circles around melodically with the lyric telling a story
to keep the circle from becoming boring. Little but guitar and drums most of
the way, but sounding like a banked orchestra. "And this is the hour/ That they
turn out the light" bringing you close to tears, or maybe to them.
Your Way
Country rhythm of love with McCartney lift and
bounce in the melody. Vocal and lyric slyly coaxing and warmly reassuring. The
suggestion is that the singer's lover is insecure and feels that she may have
done something wrong. He's not going to stand for that for an instant--she was
right, and all's well with the universe.
Spinning on an
Axis
The man can't be unpoetic or unmelodic even while
rapping. This is the sort of song that could give the genre a good name. A philosophical/physical
meditation on the emotional implications of the inevitability of sunrise, all
in words much shorter and more memorable than that!
About You
A jam which reverses the bleakness of McCartney's
poem "To Be Said" in which there's nothing to be said because his love is dead.
"Living and loving there's a lot to be said." Amen, brother.
Heather
This gorgeous melody suggested yet *another*
trip to McCartney--this time, to the moon, and the lyric is about the safe landing
there, and plans for a new home. His variation on the Lear nonsense rhyme is
light and airy, and the final "mm mm mmm" speaks volumes about the view from
that new home.
Back in the Sunshine
A song with a simple theme and a very complex
set of intertwined moods: twangy, slidey tempos and accompaniments and a hard
driving insistence in (one of) the chorus(es) that "Life's too short to spend
it lonely..." Suggestions of sore feet to ignore while rejoicing.
Your Loving Flame
Big swoopy melody with taste of Hammond Organ
among other delights. Big strong vocal, lovely longing lyric. He pleads with
wistful anticipation, and no loss of dignity. ("You would merely be saving a
life--are you doing anything better with *your* life right now?")
Riding to Jaipur
I thought it was a *jam* for the longest time.
It's a trip through an exotic jungle with strange birds nearby, vocals from
the next room, melodic Indian instrumentation, and enormous pleasure in the
journey.
Rinse the Raindrops
Paul, there's a drummer here, you don't have
to hammer with your voice...Oh, you wanted to. Well, it works flamingly well.
Every time I listen to it, I travel to India without a plane and I can *see*
the Birds of Paradise AWAKENING and feel their wings beating in my ears (damn
fine drumming, Abe) as they take off.
