Here are two reviews of James' gig in London ,I think that they insist too much on who's his father is rather the give an pinion about the performance witch is what they're supposed to do.,
From The Guardian
James McCartneyHoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, London
Caroline Sullivan guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 March 2010 22.35 GMT Article history
Shy ... James McCartney performing. Photograph: Phil Bourne/Retna Pictures
It must have taken a lot of self-belief for James McCartney to opt for a frontline career in music. Few mortals could expect to fill a Beatle's shoes, let alone someone who's inherited his DNA and faces the inevitable pitiless scrutiny. That could be why Macca's son, who's been writing songs for 10 years (though he's yet to release a record), has waited until he was 32 to tour. He's doing it from the bottom up, playing to small audiences who are there out of curiosity as much as anything (though the special relationship wasn't enough to keep a quarter of tonight's house from drifting off before the end).
McCartney's faith in himself as a craftsman is justified: he spent the set deftly swapping between guitar, mandolin and keyboards, and while his métier is primarily jangly rock, he integrated country and Steeleye Span-esque folk into the set without undue tokenism. He's a confident singer, too, giving it some yelping welly on Erratic Pulses – a punky noisefest reminiscent of his old man's Helter Skelter – and a power-pop thrashabout called Denial. The songs that allowed him to be soft and intimate, such as I Love You, Dad – yes, a tune about Macca senior – made the greater impression, though, because they compelled McCartney to face the audience without the cranked-up volume that otherwise acted as a shield between him and us.
What was missing was the killer song necessary for him to stand out from the indie-guitar hordes. If there isn't one, he'll have to cultivate more stage presence than he's got. When not actually singing, he was shy to the point where you wondered why he would submit himself to the public gaze – though he could yet develop into a chip off the charming old block.
At the Cooler, Bristol (08713 100 000), tomorrow. Then touring.
From The Times
James McCartney at the 100 Club, London W1Pete Paphides
Recommend? (4)
Anyone could see that James McCartney, playing his maiden headlining London show, had a considerable cross to bear. The cross hanging in front of his open-necked shirt was an incongruously chunky adornment on the black-clad singer. Whether Paul McCartney’s 33-year-old son was burdened by a more symbolic weight though, was harder to gauge. It can’t be easy forging a musical identity with the knowledge kicking around in the back of your mind that Penny Lane and Eleanor Rigby didn’t exist before your dad wrote them.
And sure enough, the function of the first few songs, played by McCartney’s young band at a grungy canter, was to relax a frontman who — albeit without the hair and wrinkles — seemed to have inherited his father’s entire face, but not his extrovert ease. Only four songs in, on Listen, did McCartney seem to take proper leave of his inhibitions. Abetted by a female cellist, his voice chimed with a high, hopeful vulnerability redolent of Squeeze’s Glen Tilbrook. Beginning in a similar vein, on Denial McCartney navigated from a sweet 12-string guitar strum to a hoarse, cathartic roar on the chorus.
Indeed, for someone whose between-song body language seemed so bereft of entitlement, McCartney’s ability to let rip with a hoarse bellow was, at times, startling. On Mix — a song “all about the Devil”, apparently — he and his band unleashed a pleasingly infernal racket that not even the gormless mugging of McCartney’s fresh-faced drummer could spoil.
Presumably operating on the principle that if there’s an elephant in the room the smartest thing to do is play a song called There’s an Elephant in the Room, McCartney performed two songs about his father. In the case of I Love You Dad — a slight mandolin-driven thing that went: “I love you, Dad/ You know I always will” — an introduction was probably not wholly necessary. However, benefiting from a sunburst of three-part harmonies and melancholy mellotron, My Friend was eye-mistingly affecting.
In spite or perhaps because he lacked the natural showmanship of his dad, you found yourself warming to him — not least because of his readiness to acknowledge the privileges that had propelled him to this point. Not many singers, after all, get to say: “This is a guitar given to me by Carl Perkins on my 16th birthday.” From the mouths of others, it might have sounded like a boast. From James McCartney, it sounded like simple gratitude.
No comments:
Post a Comment