Kevin Korber

Sonic Youth’s career was filled with subtle rebirths, especially at the outset. Their transformation from experimental noiseniks to the acceptable edge of the unacceptable was not an about-face but a slow evolution, but if there was a real turning point for the band, it would arguably be EVOL. Before EVOL, the band, daring as they were, remained cloistered in Lower Manhattan’s art and music scene, so esoteric that the very notion of mainstream acceptance was laughable.

The Loft are a typical Creation band in many ways. While Alan McGee’s seminal record label is most associated with either shoegaze or Oasis for most listeners, the label’s output was as much tied to bands that relied on open, unfussy melodicism and a retro, neo-psychedelic style as it was to bands that overwhelmed with sound. The Loft were that sort of unfussy band, one focused on individual songcraft above all else.

Paul McCartney has never been averse to revisiting his past. After all, this is a man who wrote nostalgic ditties to his childhood when he was in his early twenties. Indeed, the premise of The Boys of Dungeon Lane isn’t entirely new, either; McCartney engaged in a similar sort of reflection on 1997’s Flaming Pie. Unlike that album, however, The Boys of Dungeon Lane doesn’t arrive with explicit ties to McCartney’s former band, but rather his life as a whole.