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PAUL McCARTNEY'S STANDING STONE

(EMI)

Ordinarily a composer's name does not appear in the titles of his works. For that matter, the ability to read music is usually considered a prerequisite to writing a major orchestral/choral piece. But fame and money can curdle pop stars into pretentious vulgarians, and there's not much that matches the pretension and vulgarity of Paul McCartney's Standing Stone. Maybe the possessive of the title is a pre-emptive strike, given that Sir Cute One's piano doodles were fleshed out by a team of transcribers, arrangers, and orchestrators, and that the credits list an editor for McCartney's sub-Joycean babble of a poem on which this programmatic work is based (it concerns an early human referred to as "First Person Singular").

The London Symphony Chorus aaaaaahs, the LSO strings swirl soundtrackishly, and harps sound glissandos. Back when the Beatles did this stuff on "Good Night" they knew it was camp. But Standing Stone's deadpan liner notes improbably compare one of the piece's passages to Charles Ives, with whose work, they note, McCartney is unfamiliar. McCartney is, at heart, a gifted melodist, and even his overwrought Liverpool Oratorio was redeemed by some swell tunes. This leaden, bombastic mess has none.

-- Douglas Wolk