Paul McCartney, ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane’: Review

Paul McCartney will turn 84 on June 18, so it’s no wonder he’s in a nostalgic and reflective mood on his 27th post-Beatles album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane. The title itself refers to an area of Liverpool where McCartney spent part of his childhood; it is also a line from «In Liverpool,» an unreleased McCartney demo from 1991.

So it’s no accident that his first album in six years is filled with references to his storied past: The Boys of Dungeon Lane is a musical scrapbook chronicling the life and times of Paul McCartney. As he sings on the album’s lead single, «Days We Left Behind,» «Looking back at white and black / Reminders of my past.«

Coproducer Andrew Watt, who has sculpted recent albums for veteran artists Elton John, Ozzy Osbourne and the Rolling Stones that sound passably like their old selves yet still fairly mechanical, does the same here for McCartney. The Boys of Dungeon Lane is simultaneously committed to and oddly removed from the songs at times, as if McCartney is observing some of these reminisces through secondhand stories.

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But there are real connections here, too. In the opening «As You Lie There,» McCartney addresses a neighborhood crush from his Liverpool days: «Do I ever cross your mind?» he asks in a spoken-word introduction that gives way to a McCartneyesque, one-man-band rocker over nearly five minutes. And the sentimental acoustic ballad «Days We Left Behind» unspools like a slideshow of personal memories, including a line about the McCartney family home on Forthlin Road, where he and John Lennon wrote some of their earliest songs.

McCartney also reflects on his current life in The Boys of Dungeon Lane, primarily through a handful of love songs written for his wife, Nancy Shevell, including «Ripples in a Pond» and «Life Can Be Hard,» which recount their time together with family during the COVID lockdown. And the Beatles-style «Home to Us» is a full-circle moment with Ringo Starr on drums and vocals and, in many ways, the album’s center. (Not wanting to leave out George Harrison, «Down South» recounts an early hitchhiking adventure together, before they «learned to twist and shout.») Looking back, McCartney finds his place in the here and now.