Paul McCartney
The Boys of Dungeon Lane
CAPITOL

One of my favorite comedic impressions of Paul McCartney is from Saturday Night Live’s Dana Carvey. He distills the boyish charm, joviality, competitiveness, and wonder for the world in one whimsical and amicable Liverpudlian lilt. Sir Paul maintains that charm with his 20th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, wherein the octogenarian pop-rock architect builds a time machine out of scuffed acoustic guitars, warm tape hiss, and the kind of indelible melodies that cast a long shadow. His voice may be fragile on the high notes now, but that weathered quality fits these memory-rich tracks set before the British Invasion.

The physical setting of Liverpool’s Dungeon Lane serves as a sonic scrapbook of Macca’s pre-fame universe. Throughout these 14 tracks, McCartney conjures the ghosts of his youth not with rigid biographical accuracy, but with the impressionistic brushstrokes of an afternoon daydream in the studio. The album’s emotional centerpiece, “Days We Left Behind,” sets the scene early on with a stripped-back vulnerability that sounds like an artifact recovered from an attic. When Paul sings about the boys of Dungeon Lane over acoustic strings, his voice possesses a beautifully weathered grain—a stark contrast to the boyish clarity of his youth. It’s a whispered statement that gently remembers the past through the lens of the present.

What makes this slightly uneven record work so well is McCartney’s navigation of the melodic landscape alongside modern producer Andrew Watt. The production avoids the sterile polish of 2020s pop, opting instead for a home-cooked precision that recalls the ramshackle intimacy of McCartney II or the pastoral charm of Ram. On the standout cut “Ripples in a Pond,” a weeping arrangement collides with a fingerpicked acoustic guitar to create a dizzying sense of temporal vertigo. You’re instantly transported to a rainy post-war afternoon, smelling the damp wool and the coal smoke of a bygone Britain. It’s a masterclass in evocative world-building, proving that McCartney can still outstretch his long arms to grasp the fleeting hemline of the past. Even on the gentle puppy-love swing of “As You Lie There,” the emotional weight is heavy but wonderfully balanced.

By the time the album rolls through “Home to Us”—a track that delightfully reunites him with Ringo Starr—and closes with the finality of “Momma Gets By,” we’re left firmly nestled into a deep state of melancholic reverie. McCartney isn’t raging against the dying of the light here; he’s simply sitting by the window, watching the shadows grow longer across the lawn, and smiling at the figures moving in and out of his mind (the late George Harrison and John Lennon get their song moments, as well, with “Down South” and “Days We Left Behind”). The Boys of Dungeon Lane is a heartbreaking reminder that while we can never truly go home again, a perfectly constructed pop song can occasionally make us feel like we never left. The record is a testament to survival and a monument to what was, built by an icon trying to remember a simpler life before Beatlemania.

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DELIVERED STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX