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After a 10-year break, Paul McCartney has revived his experimental side project, the Fireman — the name he uses for his low-key collaborations with British producer Youth. "I came to this record with absolutely no concept of what the melodies or lyrics would be," says McCartney of the new Electric Arguments. "It was writing on the spot, which lent an electricity to the whole sound."

The duo's first two records — 1993's Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest and 1998's Rushes — were trippy, virtually vocal-free sets of ambient techno. But Electric Arguments has the feeling of a real McCartney record, with "Blackbird"-like ballads, tight songcraft and live instrumentation. "Last year we bumped into each other at a party and I said, 'Let's get some chords in there this time,'" says Youth. "I wanted to do something in a more traditional, English-folk direction."

Recording at McCartney's countryside estate in Sussex, England, the pair worked quickly, cutting an entire song each day after beginning with little more than a drum loop or an electronic texture. Before vocal takes, Youth would give McCartney very specific directions: "I'd say to him, 'Imagine you're Bob Dylan in 1967' or 'Imagine you're Captain Beefheart meets Jimi Hendrix on a bad trip,'" he says. That cue resulted in "Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight," a psychedelic blues cut with an unusually gritty vocal from McCartney.

To jump-start McCartney's songwriting, Youth suggested he look through books of po-etry. "I wasn't trying to steal an idea as much as to find beautiful words," says McCartney, who took inspiration from Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg and Walt Whitman. The phrase "silent lovers" — from Whitman's Leaves of Grass — caught his eye. "To me, that's a couple of kids in love," he says. "I thought, 'That's good. I can sing about that.'" That seed turned into the pastoral pop gem "Don't Stop Running."

In the end, McCartney was pleased with the free-form process. "The experience was like improv theater," he says. "I'd never done that before, but now I get it. It was like throwing paint at the wall, standing back and seeing if it looks good."

Additional Reporting by Jonathan Cott

[From Issue 1070 — January 22, 2009]

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