On Your Feet

When Paul McCartney thinks of Las Vegas these days, his mind's eye becomes filled with mental images of teenage runaways, a sex trade so gritty and foul it's like snorkeling in sweat and some kid in New Mexico who he fears he may have inadvertently corrupted about a year ago.

Blame it on "Beautiful Children."

That Sin City-set gut churner by Charles Bock was among the books on tape that McCartney's girlfriend picked up last summer when the two took a road trip through the American Southwest.

"A couple of them were kind of dry, one of them was a nice sort of crime adventure, then we got to this 'Beautiful Children.' Man, I tell you, it's so hard-core," McCartney marvels, sounding as if he can't decide whether to be aghast or amazed. "One of the elements of the book is about a comic book artist. I met this kid in Santa Fe, he was doing some comic stuff in the streets, and I said, 'Hey man, you gotta get this book ''Beautiful Children.'' ' And then, about a couple of days later, when we got further into the book, I suddenly realized, 'Oh my God, this is almost like hard-core porn, and I'm turning this kid on to it. What the hell is he going to think of me?' I hope to God he didn't get it," he chuckles. "That's what I think of now when I think of Vegas."

McCartney has a penchant for telegraphing his emotions -- it's one of the attributes that's made him such a beloved songwriter, that willingness to hold little back.

Speaking with the man isn't all that different from taking in one of his tunes -- there are twists and turns here and there, but it's all overtaken by a shock of exuberance that would be easy to caricaturize if it weren't so earnest and unforced.

In the span of a few minutes of conversation from his London office one Monday morning, the elastic-lunged McCartney adopts the voice of an Arizona radio DJ reciting the day's weather forecast, voices the sales pitch of a door-to-door Bible peddler (and the woman he's advertising his wares to) and throws in a taste of Elvis Presley's hound-dog drawl for good measure.

He waxes rhapsodic about everything from the books he's been reading (he's way into the quantum mechanics of "The Holographic Universe") to the movies he's seen lately ("Slumdog Millionaire," "Gran Torino") to the simple pleasures of making his young daughter breakfast and taking her to school.

And then, the next thing you know, he's straight up yelling into the phone, sounding like Robert Plant with an anvil on his foot.

Currently, he's singing a few lines from "Nothing Too Much Out of Sight," a mean and nasty blues-rock firebomb defined by one of McCartney's most snarling, man-on-fire vocal takes. It's a thing of ugly beauty, raw and off the cuff, an attack dog that's chewed itself off its leash.

The cut is the first tune on "Electric Arguments," the latest disc from McCartney's alter-ego Fireman project, which sees him pairing up with producer Youth to indulge in McCartney's more experimental side.

The way it works: The two meet up in the studio with no material or preconceived ideas, then bang out a song from scratch in a day. For McCartney, it's kind of like improv theater set to a beat.

"Literally, we'd have no idea in the morning what we were going to make, then during that day, we'd pull out a million ideas, sift through them, and kind of put them in order so that, eventually, we'd have a song," he explains. "I'd come in the next day and say, 'What did we do yesterday?' And (Youth) would be like, 'This.' So then we'd just float off of that. I'd say, 'Let's do something a bit raunchier today.' And we'd just dream it."

True to his words, the album does flow by like a series of random thoughts, some abrupt and violent, some sunny and invigorated.

Unlike past Fireman albums, which tended to be ambient in nature and more about mapping out various soundscapes than coming with vocal-centric songs, "Electric Arguments" is tethered to a more traditional song cycle, albeit a diffuse one.

The disc drifts from lo-fi acoustic pop that sounds as if it was recorded on a bedroom four-track ("Two Magpies") to wide-eyed stadium rock ("Sing the Changes") to a harmonica-fried blues skronk ("Highway").

Taken together, it forms one of McCartney's most impulsive, uninhibited works.

It sounds like the type of record that's meant to get listeners on their feet, which will be underscored at McCartney's upcoming gig at The Joint, where he requested that no seats be placed on the floor.

"We did ask if that would be possible. It just makes it a little bit more of a party," he says, sounding like a man who never gets tired of confetti showers.

"I don't want to grow up," he adds, distilling the principle that's powered his career in 10 words or less. "It's boring."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.