Given how prolific Paul McCartney has been in the studio over the last five decades, some works are bound to slip through the cracks. Ocean’s Kingdom is one such effort, a release which few may be even aware of, and less so interested in listening to. It’s an hour-long classical album with the intention of scoring the ballet of the same name. The trouble here is not the intent of the music or the project it serves, but the meaning behind it and how little McCartney has managed to make out of these forays into classical, instrumental albums. He tried his best on Standing Stone, and that was, at its very best, a cliche run-through of tones you would expect from the opera. Ocean’s Kingdom is a little more considered, and it’s helped along by the suggestion of plot from the emotional swells and instrumental rises and falls. That much makes sense and it certainly has the structure needed to put together a battle of good and evil.
A shame, then, that it’s so bereft of life. It never feels as though McCartney, as composer, has any imprint on this music. That’s not because we know of the domesticity tropes or his love for the surreal in other works, but because he toys with classical music in a similar fashion to a hobbyist. It’s the equivalent of covering a favoured artist for an album throwaway, but without the nuance of voice or style to really bring it to life. It’s the usual ebbs and flows of an instrumental album, with the first movement doing just about everything it can. McCartney pulls no punches across Ocean’s Kingdom because there is little he can hide. The second movement, Hall of Dance, feels like a routine, twee piece which brings on that inevitable calm before the storm. Above all though, beyond the predictability of where the heightened drama may come in, there is a listenable quality to Ocean’s Kingdom.
That’s not to say the predictability gives the album any shortcomings. Imprisonment, the third movement of this four-movement composition, is a swell of lighter touches. Brass and strings at their best under McCartney’s more solid grasp of instrumental joys. Ocean’s Kingdom has a consistency to it that compositions from McCartney usually have. There are no jolts of embarrassment nor liberating new experiences. It’s all solid work; predictable it may be there is a core to it that remains enjoyable. Swelling instrumentals and tones that keep on cropping up here are written with the same joy as experiencing it for the first time, as McCartney often is when writing these compositions. Again, no harm, but don’t expect some moving miracle from The Beatles and Wings member.
Instead, prepare for a tame but telling time with his latest composition to date. It’s basically an oratorio with the inevitable good against evil, the depths of the ocean and its history plundered for the sake of a few strong instrumental moments. Imprisonment is the best of all, a few moments of real interest to be had on there but nothing to have you return to this, even if it is just for background noise as you potter about with something else on your mind. McCartney has had a decades-long flirtation with compositions, and while none of them are going to be on par with his greatest hits, there is a lot to like about them. He has a knack for instrumental mood, as should be expected from the veteran rocker, but he does seem to enjoy projects like Ocean’s Kingdom. For that reason alone, it’ll be worth a listen to the McCartney faithful.
