The Fireman: Electric Arguments

The sound of old rockers clinging on to their youthful experimentalism is rarely edifying. This is ably proved by the third Fireman collaboration between Paul McCartney and former Killing Joke bassist Youth (a moniker long past its sell-by date). Their website trumpets the "pure musical possibilities" of Electric Arguments, but this is heavily laboured hackwork. There is pompous, ponderous old-man blues; there is the sort of stadium rock cliche better left to fester in the 80s; there are pan pipes. There is also a particularly grim, turgid squawk that calls itself Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight. This has been pegged by the more excitable tabloids as a hate rant against Heather Mills, but if this is what she has had to put up with, it may just have done the unthinkable and engendered sympathy for the poor woman.