The Boys of Dungeon Lane (2026)
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: the voice isn’t what it was, but that’s exactly why this record works. McCartney can’t land every note as cleanly as he used to, but the fact that he’s still reaching for them, and still mostly getting there, is the whole point. His vocal strain has always been and continues to be part of the instrument. On a record this preoccupied with looking back, hearing the years in his voice does more for the songs than a clean take ever could.
As You Lie There opens it, acoustic picking under a vocal that starts almost spoken before that raspy Wings-era push kicks in. It’s a strong, rough-edged start, a song of one-sided longing for someone he met exactly once, and the energy shifts land abruptly enough to keep you leaning in. “Lost Horizon” follows with the kind of straightforward pop-rock McCartney III might have been if Paul hadn’t gone experimental, all triggered memories and rougher guitar. When he gets to you’ve gotta live for now, you take the line from a man who means it.
The album’s real argument is in the production. McCartney keeps fusing late-60s textures with modern studio work, and Mountain Top is the clearest case: a little Sgt. Pepper, a little Magical Mystery Tour, then a hard turn into NEW and Egypt Station territory, capped by a tempo change at the end that flat-out rocks. It shouldn’t blend as well as it does.
Underneath all of it runs a thread of memory, home, and family that gives the record its weight. Days We Left Behind is the soft, storytelling heart of it, and the song that hands the album its title with the line about the boys of Dungeon Lane. Down South is a thick, full acoustic strummer about youth, hitchhiking, and talking rock and roll on a morning bus, complete with a wink before we learned to twist and shout, the kind of Beatles callback that’s pure candy if you grew up on this stuff. Salesman Saint turns to his parents directly, a salesman father and a saint of a mother carrying on after the war, set in a dynamic 3/4 with brass. And the closer, Momma Gets By, is a somber piano ballad where his age shows most, carried by orchestration that’s the best thing on the track.
Then there are the ones that just rock or just land. Ripples in a Pond ups the pace right when the album needs it, driven by standout bass and a great solo, one of the best things here. Come Inside is the hidden gem, bluesy piano-rock with proper classic guitar tones and real commercial appeal in the middle of this mid-2020s rock renaissance. It’s a stomper. Never Know rides rich bass, bouncy keys, a 60s recorder I had no business enjoying, and trademark 70s Wings harmonies. We Two and Life Can Be Hard go warm and homey, the latter loungey and falsetto-laced, somewhere near Kisses on the Bottom but leaning acoustic pop. First Star of the Night is a nylon-string lullaby for the modern day.
And then Home to Us, where Ringo shows up. The two of them don’t reinvent anything, and you wouldn’t want them to. It’s exactly what the last two Beatles standing sound like now, an ode to a home that wasn’t much but meant everything, and they do it so well it’s hard not to get a lump in your throat. Forever catchy, forever replayable.
A late-career McCartney record that knows exactly what it is. A man taking stock of home, family, youth, and lasting love, with a voice that wears every year of it. The era-blending keeps it from sliding into a nostalgia exercise, and the highs sit with anything he’s done in decades.
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Highlight Songs
• Home to Us
• Ripples in a Pond
• Come Inside
• Mountain Top
Own it, Stream it, Forget about it?
Own it. This is McCartney in a comfortable, honest mode, and it rewards living with it instead of sampling it. If you have any love for The Beatles or Wings, the callbacks alone earn it, and the family songs will get you somewhere a simple stream never will. Newcomers can start with the highlights, but this one’s built for the people who’ve been here the whole time.
Overall Rating:
4 Stars
