Electric Arguments is credited to “The Fireman,” but this fireman’s actual identity is no secret: It’s Sir Paul McCartney’s charming electronic side project — and it’s streaming online, free, at NPR.
The concept dates back to the nineties, when the former Beatle recorded two instrumental albums with a producer called Youth (who got his own start as the bassist in the industrial punk band Killing Joke). This time around, this unlikeliest of duos has made an honest-to-goodness rock album — and made it in a hurry, just as the boys in Sir Paul’s old band used to do. Each of the 13 songs you’ll hear here was written and recorded in a single day, with McCartney singing and playing every part. Spontaneity does the old man good: At 66, he sounds like an ambitious kid running amok in the studio. We especially like the spaced-out closer, “Don’t Stop Running” — it’s a fine return to psychedelic form by a musician who did as much as anyone to invent psychedelia in the first place.
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