{"id":711616,"date":"2026-06-03T05:38:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T05:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/711616\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T05:38:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T05:38:15","slug":"paul-mccartney-the-boys-of-dungeon-lane-album-review-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/711616\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul McCartney: The Boys of Dungeon Lane Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul McCartney<\/a> must have been born nostalgic. How else to explain songs like \u201cPenny Lane,\u201d \u201cThe Long and Winding Road,\u201d and \u201cYour Mother Should Know,\u201d all wistful reveries for a mythical past, penned while McCartney was still in his 20s? So it\u2019s only natural that the 83-year-old singer-songwriter should indulge in a wistful return to old Liverpool times on the autobiographical The Boys of Dungeon Lane, his first studio album in six years. The tired old trope that John Lennon<\/a> was the experimental Beatle while McCartney made music for grannies may have long been disproved, but this is also not the McCartney of Kanye<\/a> collabs and secret ambient techno albums<\/a>; it\u2019s not even the figure behind the vague hip-hop inflections of 2020\u2019s McCartney III<\/a>. Instead The Boys of Dungeon Lane gives us comfortable, whimsical Macca in excelsis\u2014even \u201cMountain Top,\u201d the album\u2019s big psychedelic number, is as soft as a toy poodle\u2014and, largely, it suits him.<\/p>\n

McCartney didn\u2019t really even have to try here. Beatles fans will flip for the very idea of songs like \u201cDown South,\u201d about hitchhiking with George Harrison<\/a>; and \u201cHome to Us,\u201d a duet with Ringo Starr<\/a>. Whether this is McCartney cramming his basket full of low-hanging fruit or simply leaning into his strengths will depend on your tolerance for extremely well-crafted sentimentalia.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

The album has some captivating musical moments, notably the teatime psychedelia of \u201cMountain Top,\u201d which ends (all too briefly) with eerie tape loops and a driving Apache beat, and \u201cSalesman Saint,\u201d a song about the experiences of McCartney\u2019s parents during World War II that plays with contrasting time signatures and Big Band jazz. And the story behind \u201cWe Two\u201d is fascinating\u2014McCartney and producer Andrew Watt used a four-track tape machine that the Fab Four once recorded on, then bounced down the tracks for that authentic \u201960s feel\u2014even if the results are resolutely retro, most notable for the heavy Beatles snare sound. Mostly, though, Dungeon Lane\u2019s musical palette is raucous guitar boogie, like Wings<\/a> in their rockier moments, interspersed with dreamy acoustic numbers, as soft as campfire marshmallows.<\/p>\n

What carries the album is its songwriting. McCartney may be history\u2019s greatest writer of silly love songs and sentimental pop tunes, and if there\u2019s nothing as toweringly evocative on The Boys of Dungeon Lane as \u201cPenny Lane,\u201d there\u2019s also nothing as cloyingly lightweight as his work on 1984\u2019s \u201cWe All Stand Together\u201d with the Frog Chorus. \u201cDays We Left Behind,\u201d a maudlin tale of \u201csmoky bars and cheap guitars,\u201d has a first-rate chorus that seems tailor-made for McCartney\u2019s newly fragile upper range, sung like a man whose intense reminiscing has actually left him out of breath, while \u201cMomma Gets By\u201d is a haunting ballad laced with drama. \u201cDown South\u201d initially feels disappointing in its low-key storytelling until the plaintive and ingeniously simple chorus hooks the listener with its tale of friendship forged.<\/p>\n

Even when songs don\u2019t connect, they are constructed with the invisible efficiency of a top-end Swiss watch. \u201cAs You Lie There\u201d switches on a dime between strutting glam rock and acoustic whimsy, simultaneously innocent and horny in a way that brilliantly conveys the song\u2019s tale of teenage infatuation, while \u201cRipples in a Pond\u201d twitches, turns, and doubles back on the melody with the stylish confidence of a master songwriter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul McCartney must have been born nostalgic. How else to explain songs like \u201cPenny Lane,\u201d \u201cThe Long and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[342,49,48,75,341,343],"class_list":["post-711616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=711616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}