MUSIC FROM SPACE: Paul McCartney - DANCE TONIGHT

Sometimes you almost had to wonder if the old "Paul is dead" rumors were true. Otherwise, how did the Paul McCartney who recorded Yesterday and Helter Skelter become the Paul McCartney who recorded the approximately 7000 tragically bland songs he inflicted upon us later?

But the man who sang When I'm 64 is now 66, and you get the feeling that he really wants to make something worthwhile again before it's too late. There is a new rasp to his voice and that last face-lift was kind of unfortunate, but McCartney's music has at last regained some of the youthful urgency it's been missing since 1970-something. (Click the image at left to buy McCartney's Memory Almost Full CD/DVD.)

Dance Tonight is a charming little thing that would sound at home on a later Beatles LP. All it's missing is that bracing dash of cynicism and despair that John Lennon contributed to many of McCartney's most beloved tunes. ("Life is very short, and there's no time...") Dance Tonight's video is a wonderfully creepy number from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (and Everlong) director Michel Gondry, featuring a semi-transparent Natalie Portman and other mischievous fairy folk screwing with the mind of a hapless postman who's just trying to deliver a freaking cricket bat. Gondry finds something sinister in McCartney's impenetrable whimsy, casting Sir Paul as a kind of mandolin-strumming Robin Goodfellow. It's both a promise and a threat: follow that sweet music, and Paul will take you to a party that never, ever, ever ends.




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