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The Fireman Electric Arguments

The Fireman (Paul McCartney & Youth)
Electric Arguments
2008

By David Hicks

The Beatles! 
Wings! 
The Fireman? 
Yup. 
Paul has always been a whirlwind when it comes to getting more recordings in the can, and at 82 years of age, his solo career is still going strong. But, while I thought I knew most of his recordings, it turns out that until recently I was unaware of The Fireman. While the creative output of The Fireman has not approached the volume of Paul’s other groups, it is a collaboration that has spanned a fair amount of time, beginning with 1993s Strawberry Oceans Ships Forest, followed in 1998 with Rushes, the collaboration with McCartney’s Liverpool Sound Collage in 2000, through 2008’s release of Electric Arguments. 
The Fireman is a collaboration between McCartney and Martin Glover. Glover better known by his stage name, Youth, was also a founding member and bassist of the rock band Killing Joke. As of this writing, I will admit that I have none of the aforementioned albums in my collection, even though I own all of the Beatles’ albums, Paul’s solo albums, and some Wings. 
And what would you expect the music from two self-described rockers to sound like? Well, it depends on which of their albums you listen to. Interestingly, The Fireman began as an ambient-techno-electronica group and along the way morphed more closely into the experimental rock category.  
But back to the beginning with the Strawberry Ocean Ships Forest released in 1993. Though McCartney and Youth are both uncredited on the album, the genesis began after Youth worked with McCartney mixing the songs for Paul’s 9th solo album, Off The Ground. After that collaboration, Paul asked Youth if he wanted to remix those tracks and a couple of tracks from Wing’s Back To The Egg album into a completely different album. The mixes are not direct samples such that I can easily recognize the music’s relationships to the original McCartney songs, because Youth deconstructed the original samples, added music, and blended the result to form the new tracks. If you like Techno-Ambient-Electronica music, you might find this to be an easily listenable album, though the album was originally met with little success until the McCartney contribution was leaked and all of the Beatles’ fans (except me) started buying the album. 
For my tastes, I find their second release, Rushes easier to appreciate. The title of the album, when combined with the name of the band gives reference to a line from McCartney’s song, Penny Lane. Youth stated that he was most proud of this album as it was recorded when Linda McCartney was going through the final stages of her cancer, noting that she was very involved with the project- her voice is given vocal credit- and that he thinks of the album as a beautiful requiem for her. The album was released several months after Linda’s passing. 
There was also a bit of ancient online speculation about what activity the woman featured on the track, Fluid, might have been engaged in at the time of the recording. But that was in the early days of the internet when the widespread availability of anything lascivious was only a glimmer.  
Weirdly, McCartney did a 70-minute webcast to promote the album, performing live on keyboards, bass, and guitar, and whistling all while wearing a disguise and never speaking. An unknown woman answered questions submitted by the online participants. 
Lastly, fast forward to the 2008 release of Electric Arguments. Each song was recorded individually one day at a time at McCartney's Hog Hill studio, though the completion of the album spanned nearly an entire year. Paul is quoted as saying that recording this album felt a bit like “Improv Theater.” As on the previous albums, Paul played all the instruments while Youth handled the co-production, so basically, Paul was musically improvising with himself. As a result, this album will greet you with full-blown McCartney vocals and signature sounds that you would find the roots of on any of his mainstream recordings. You will also still find some of the ambient flavorings sprinkled in that may shift your thoughts toward The Fireman’s earlier releases. Hearing a track from this through Roon’s Radio feature was my first introduction to this duo’s music, and clearly, this album has met with the widest acceptance among general McCartney fans, though as always, YMMV.


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