Considering I already reviewed the first one and I'll be reviewing the third one next month, it's a perfect time to examine the black sheep of the entire McCartney discography. I guess Paul was looking for a way to shake up his sound a little bit and jump on a trend of dabbling with electronics. So let's just start with Temporary Secretary. If any McCartney track could be used as a torture divice it's this one. It has this ear piercing, cycling electronic melody that is way too loud, doesn't change or stop for a second over the course of this three minute song, only drills deeper and deeper into your brain. It doesn't fit into the song at all, the tune itself isn't even that good to begin with but it still would be a thousand times better without it. It's like if you layered a sound of an alarm clock going off over the entire runtime of Maybe I'm Amazed. It's just about as tasteful.
With that out of the way, there are moments on the album I like. The opener Coming Up isn't too bad, I like the guitar line and the melody a lot, I just wish the vocals weren't so muffled. Waterfalls is actually quite stunning and Paul delivers one of his better vocal performances. It might be one of my favorite solo McCartney tracks. He follows that up with Nobody Knows, where he's trying his best to do a sounthern accent over a country instrumental. It's all downhill from here. There's a couple of intrumental electronic cuts that aren't as out there as Temporary Secretary but aren't nearly interesting enough to be worth anyone's time. Summer's Day Song sounds like boring church music, there's a boogie track later with terrible vocal mix. Quality picks up a bit towards the end, Darkroom is an electronic experiment that gets the closest to being succesful, the groove is solid, it's almost danceable in a weird way. It's also filled with bizzare sound effects that make me chuckle every time I listen to it. The final track One Of This Days sounds like a typical acoustic Mccartney song. After all the insanity we've been through it feels like we have woken up from a fever dream. Was any of it real life?
McCartney II was originally meant to be a double album but had to be reduced to just one disc, cutting down track lenghts and getting rid of some weaker material. That means what we got were the highlights. Eventually some of those songs were released as bonus tracks, I haven't been able to sit through all of it, they were like ten minutes each. I would happily swap Check My Machine for some of tracks from the main album though. It's almost nine minutes long, it has a distorted vocal screaming only "Check my machine" over the entire running time and somehow it's still entertaining and doesn't get boring. I would never guessed it's a McCartney song but that just makes it better. Highly reccomend that one.
What an insane record. It might be one of Paul's worst but I'll still prefer if III ends up sounding more like this and less like his recent efforts. Egypt Station ranged from boring to unlistenable. Fuh You is still the worst McCatney track in existance. At least II is an entertaining trainwreck and not a failed and shameless sell-out.
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