Kisses on the Bottom (2012)

 


  1. I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write
     Myself a Letter
  2. Home (When Shaddows Fall)
  3. It's Only a Paper Moon
  4. More Than I Can Wish You
  5. The Glory of Love
  6. We Three (My Echo, My Shadow, and Me)
  7. Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive
  8. My Valentine
  9. Always
  10.My Very Good Friend the Milkman
  11.Bye Bye Blackbird
  12.Get Yourself Another Fool
  13.The Inch Worm
  14.Only Our Hearts

 

WWen Paul McCartney first came to public attention in 1963, he was just 21 — mop-topped, fresh-faced, and endlessly melodic. Few could have imagined that, half a century later, he'd still be recording and releasing music with both relevance and grace. Least of all McCartney himself, whose tongue-in-cheek portrayal of dotage in When I’m Sixty-Four now reads like gentle foreshadowing rather than whimsy.

And yet, here we are. In 2012, now comfortably past the age of collecting a pension and with a knighthood tucked neatly under his belt, McCartney delivered Kisses on the Bottom — an album that seems deliberately crafted to sound exactly like the kind of record a young Paul might have imagined making “when he got old.” That it was released just in time for Valentine’s Day was no coincidence.

This is McCartney in full crooner mode, paying affectionate tribute to the music hall and jazz standards of his youth. It is no great surprise. McCartney was always the romantic of the group — the man who, even in the wildest days of Beatlemania, wasn’t afraid to lace his records with orchestras, sentiment, and old-world charm. He had flirted with this style before (see A Taste of Honey or Honey Pie), but here he dives in completely. Think Sinatra with a Liverpudlian lilt.

The material — largely composed of covers — includes standards made famous by the likes of Tony Bennett and Dean Martin. McCartney handles them with disarming sincerity. His voice, now deeper and more textured with age, suits the arrangements surprisingly well. His phrasing is elegant, never forced, and the restraint on display is striking. These are not reinvented songs; they are lovingly interpreted ones.

The lone eyebrow-raiser is the inclusion of The Inch Worm — a peculiar choice that seems more suited to school assemblies than supper clubs. Originally penned by Frank Loesser and introduced in a Danny Kaye film, it is sweet, whimsical, and not particularly romantic — unless arithmetic happens to be your love language.

Curiously, McCartney’s only surviving bandmate, Ringo Starr, attempted something vaguely similar on his first solo record in 1970 — the curio that is Sentimental Journey. The results were patchy, in part because Ringo was still in his twenties and, more bluntly, lacked the vocal finesse required to pull it off. McCartney, by contrast, arrives at this project with both the years and the instincts to make it work. He is, after all, the man for whom melody has always come as naturally as breathing.

Kisses on the Bottom is not designed to compete with McCartney’s classic work. It is a side project in the truest sense — a gentle indulgence, a tip of the hat to his childhood influences. Yet for all its quietness, it reveals something fundamental about the man: his reverence for songcraft, his refusal to chase trends, and his enduring desire to create beauty.

And yes — your gram might very well enjoy this one. Though chances are, she's younger than McCartney himself.

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