Paul McCartney’s ‘Boys of Dungeon Lane’ Is a Wistful, Playful Delight

Paul McCartney is a master of the fake-out. The first feint around his new album, “The Boys of Dungeon Lane,” came when he released “Days We Left Behind” as the first single, an exceedingly gentle and wistful ballad that allowed for the possibility that the whole LP might be a collection of acoustic memory songs. The second bluff comes when you have the record in hand and put it on, to find that the opening track, “As You Lie There,” is very much in that same soft, nostalgic, fingerpicking vein … but just for the first 55 seconds. At that point, a loud drum fill announces itself, snarling electric guitars kick in and McCartney’s trademark howls of old arrive in time for a fairly kick-ass chorus.

That’s when you know for sure that “Dungeon Lane,” which comes out May 29, is decidedly not going to be anyone’s idea of an old man album, whatever the calendar may say about his tender age. (Next month, he’ll be able to sing “When I’m 84.”) He’s determined to keep it fresh and lively, and occasionally even fiery, but not by pretending that he’s a youngster. Actually, the promise of “acoustic memory songs” offered by that first single was half right; it’s just that you can scratch “acoustic” as a through-and-through qualifier. On at least half these 14 songs, McCartney is taking an unapologetically nostalgic look at his ever-present past. But he’s doing it mostly in the flagrantly commercial, engaging, oft-rocking style of a 1970s Wings record. McCartney is acting his age and defying it too, which is kind of the best of both worlds.

Superlatives are meant to be quibbled over, but here’s one that will be met with a lot of agreement: “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” is absolutely the best album ever recorded and released by a rock star in his 80s. Now, that could be taken as damning with faint praise, because how many serious, qualifying entries have there been? But that fact that there hasn’t been much competition for that title yet doesn’t diminish the achievement. There are other commendations that could be thrown on, like how this might be McCartney’s best album of the 21st century. Macca-heads all have their favorites from his later work; mine up until now has been 2007’s “Memory Almost Full,” partly because it was similar to this one in the way it mixed ruminative thoughts with crunchy sounds. (If he imagined he was running out of mental RAM back when he made that record 19 years ago, imagine how he might feel now.)

But this album is even more a celebration of memory, with plenty of current happiness thrown in too — as if his recollections about his Liverpool boyhood and his contemporary mash notes to his wife, Nancy Shevell, occupied adjacent spots on his personal timeline. He seems to get a kick out of leaping between the 1950s and the 2020s in these lyrics, with neither era luring him any closer to melancholia than the other. McCartney has some good company this time, anyway, in his cheerful time-tripping. Aiding him in all this robust reminiscence is his co-producer on all the tracks and co-writer on about half of them, Andrew Watt, classic rock’s biggest modern cheerleader. With his taste in superstar collaborators, Watt is 35 going on 70, but when it comes to his enthusiasm level as he’s egging on his heroes, he’s more 35-going-on-17. There may be a couple of generation gaps between them, but as partners in willful agelessness, they couldn’t be better matched.

“Dungeon Lane” is quite a variety pack, not just in the differing styles from song to song, but quite often in the shifts that tracks take just from moment to moment. An album that has so many tunes about boyhood is well served by songwriting and arrangements that evoke such a never-ending sense of play. This album contains the most key changes you’ll find anywhere this side of a locksmith’s workweek, and not for show-offy effect, but because that’s just how McCartney rolls, and writes, still. That first track, “As You Lie There,” is the track with the most extreme dynamics, in the tradition of a previous you-didn’t-see-that-coming opener like “Band on the Run.”

But the kicky little intra-song surprises hardly end there. If you enjoy hearing the sound of McCartney riding the gear-shift knob, you’re bound to get a kick out of how “Mountain Top” — a slightly goofy ode to girls indulging in wholesome psychedelia at a musical festival — suddenly shifts from Beatles-style harpsichords and loops to a double-time rocker, in its final minute. (That track ends with some credited but unintelligible mumbling from Shevell. Could it be she’s saying “cranberry sauce”? No, that’s not it.)

And then, bringing up the album’s most musically audacious conceit, there’s “Salesman Saint,” a salute to the struggles of McCartney’s parents (Jim was the salesman; Mary, as you know, the saint) in WWII-era Liverpool before he was born. Partway through, this heretofore unassuming number gets an overlay of a “Ballroom Dancing”-style swing orchestra, one that’s not even in the same time signature as the basic track underneath. It’s a freakishly weird touch, and a satisfying one. Suffice it to say, no one can accuse him of getting lazy in his 80s when he can still dream up a turn that far left. “Salesman Saint” is one of three songs grouped together at the end of the album that have string and/or woodwind arrangements by Ben Foster and Giles Martin, two of the very few outside interlopers who’ve been allowed into the otherwise insular world of Watt and McCartney. If you’re a hardcore fan, you’re grateful for the intrusion: There’s something that just feels right about being in Macca’s universe, any time a clarinet shows up.

But the eclecticism almost sneaks up on you. There’s some consistency to how McCartney and his partner have fashioned this as a rock record that’s closer to mid-period Wings than any kind of flagrant Beatles self-homage. With that said, though, Paul does play the recorder on one track; take from that what you will. And while I can’t say for certain whether this was deliberate or not, I did enjoy the moment in the otherwise minimalist “Never Know” in which, at the two-minute point, there’s a quick a cappella harmony bit that transitions right into a Höfner-esque bass lick, as if he decided to quickly throw in back-to-back nods to “Pet Sounds” and “Revolver” just because he could.

One thing there’s none of, in this potpourri? Bad vibes. Anyone who’s heard “Days We Left Behind,” you’ve already heard the sum total of the album’s sorrowful content, and that only amounts to a hint of melancholy in a couple lines. He switches the repeated lyrics around a bit, thoughtfully making certain that the tune does not land as a complete lament for things lost, but doesn’t undercut the reality that there is a cost to the passage of time, either. “No one can erase the days we left behind,” he sings in one version of the chorus, suggesting the past can have some kind of permanence, but then he changes “no one can erase…” to “nothing can reclaim…,” and that’s about as sad a thought as you’re going to get out of a Paul McCartney record right now. It certainly doesn’t linger.

But he does believe in yesterday… or in time being a flat circle. “As You Lie There” really sets out in an audacious way to put us inside McCartney’s pubescent mind, as he speaks and sings his longing thoughts to a neighborhood object of desire from when he was growing up, a girl he’s identified in listening sessions as Jasmine. In real life, he barely exchanged any words with her, dreaming only of her in an upstairs bedroom window as he’d walk by her home. If you’re a movie buff, you might think of “Citizen Kane” and the poignant little speech given by Mr. Bernstein, where he remembers falling at first sight for a young woman with a parasol. “She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl,” Mr. Bernstein said. There’s something beautifully spooky and wonderful about Paul McCartney, at 83, being like that Orson Welles character, still mooning over someone who barely knew his name 70 years ago. (“Sorry, Nance,” he said to his wife, apologetically, at one of those listening parties.)

The charming thing is, McCartney is indulging a lot of youthful crushes in these songs. “Down South” is really about his platonic crush on George Harrison, when they were fellow travelers on buses in Liverpool and lorry rides down to the coast. “We’d talk about guitars and rock and roll / They were the subjects that would never grow old,” he sings. “It was a good way to get to know you, before we learned to twist and shout.” This solo-acoustic ode to friendship from the Cute One to the Quiet One is so romantic, you could almost swoon.

Meanwhile, there’s a true consummation of a Beatles relationship here with “Home to Us,” the first-ever true duet between McCartney and Ringo Starr, with a sprightly feel that splits the difference between power-pop and the country-rock feel Ringo revived for his last couple of albums. The collaboration is their mutual love letter to growing up in post-war Britain without a lot of privilege but with a lot of help from their school buddies. At least two out of four Fabs agree: Liverpudlian poverty was awesome.

If it’s darker shadings or regrets you’re looking for, you’ve come to the wrong Beatle, as always. Now, as ever, there may be some who hold McCartney’s cherubic good will against him, as a badge of insufficient seriousness. But for all its characteristic positivity, “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” really puts the lie to the silly idea that the best composer of the last century is not a deep thinker or feeler. There’s a deeply observational quality to his songwriting, especially evident in the most nostalgic numbers here, that makes his eternal cheer feel well earned.

In one of the best tracks here, “Lost Horizon,” he invokes an entire ambient audio history of his childhood, from train whistles to playground noise to fairground echoes to a tabletop clock. He’s been in love with all things aural, not just musical things, since he was a lad, and as he ticks off them off, he concludes, “That sound can lift me up… That sound can do my head in.” We know exactly what he means, not because we grew up with the same background noise, but because right in the middle of those phrases, he throws in a beautifully bent electric guitar lick that will lift you up and do your head in, too, if you let it. After all these years, McCartney still has an undying urge to try to change your day or your life with a sound. He’s boyish that way.