On Rotation This Week — Paul McCartney, Fountains of Wayne, Sarah Jarosz

Here’s some of what I’ve been listening to this week:

Paul McCartney — McCartney III

So this is Paul’s third in the McCartney trilogy, coming forty years after the extremely-bizarre-but-also-kinda-cool McCartney II. The oddly placed five-and-a-half minute opening instrumental “Long Tailed Winter Bird” briefly made me think that McCartney was pulling something in the vein of Bruce Springsteen’s disastrous “Outlaw Pete”, but the album improves. “Women and Wives” is a beautiful little piano ditty. This is the sound of someone who’s already accomplished everything humanly possible for one lifetime, with no fucks left to give, just fiddling around with a bunch of instruments to see what he can come up with and putting it out there. Inconsistent, but worth a listen.

Fountains of Wayne- Sky Full of Holes

So somehow I missed this one in the Fountains of Wayne discography. Released in 2011, it was Fountains of Wayne’s last record. This was a band that knew its formula for making addictingly catchy power-pop tunes with witty, tongue-in-cheek lyrics and rightfully didn’t feel the need to stray very far from that. On this last record, there’s definitely a different mood. It’s still Fountains of Wayne, but it’s less bright and sunny and glossy and flowery. Instead, there’s a lot more acoustic guitars and folkiness, even a country twang, and more melancholy than usual. Real Fountains of Wayne listeners that know the band for more than “Stacy’s Mom” should already be aware that the band is capable of creating gloomy, emotional masterpieces (“Hackensack”, “A Fine Day for a Parade”). Overall, I wouldn’t say it’s quite as good as the preceding FoW records, but that’s a high bar, and this is still very enjoyable in its own right.

Sarah Jarosz — World on the Ground

I first came across Sarah Jarosz from her cover of Prince’s “When Doves Cry”. She’s the real deal. Super talented, great voice, just a great musician who can sing anything. Most of her stuff seems to fall in the bluegrass/folk vein, somewhat in the area of The Avett Brothers and Mandolin Orange and The Decemberists and so on. Her latest album is just chock-full of well-constructed, well-written folk songs sparsely arranged that just really stand out for their simplicity. “Hometown” and “Johnny” sound like songs Springsteen should have written in the 80s.