This is Ringo Starr‘s 18th studio release, so you might expect him now to be in a wholesome creative space; a man fired by inspiration, his expression unfettered and distilled and, crucially, informed.

But he isn’t. Postcards From Paradise, replete with eleven original tracks, was produced by Ringo and recorded at his home studio in Los Angeles with friends and family, including Joe Walsh, Benmont Tench, Dave Stewart and Peter Frampton featuring throughout.

But if you’re getting too excited, don’t. Yes, he’s Ringo Starr, the sticksman who gave the backbeat to some of the most progressive and influential records of the 20th century, and the musicianship is undoubtedly faultless on this album. But on his own, Starr’s muse only permits him to crank out plodding rock workouts that in some way prove he’s “still got it”. Whatever “it” is.

But if “it” is some of the magic of The Beatles, it appears that it now rests solely with the genius of Mr. McCartney. With the opener of ‘Rory And The Hurricanes’ – a song about the band Ringo was in prior to The Beatles – it’s evident he is gilding his own lily and re-mythologising the myth.  With lyrics like: “The next time we went down to London town/we weren’t hanging around/I was with you-know-who/I played the drums like I always do,” and: “Going down to Soho/Was the place you had to go,” or even: “We were sleeping on the floor/living on bread and jam,” Ringo is reminding us of his provenance, of who he is and just how elevated his position has become in this business of musical art.

The LP becomes an extended tale of life early on in the pre-Beatles era, an era upon which he looks back with fondness. It’s the era that formed his sensibilities. It’s twee and full of faux innocence. He was, after all, always more at home with ‘Yellow Submarine’ than with ‘Golden Slumbers’. Yet each song is delivered, as ever, in the same tonal honk, but with warmth and familiarity. You can’t call this singing. But nor is it talking. It’s something called Ringoing. It might even be classed as easy listening if it weren’t so difficult to listen to.

With ‘You Bring The Party Down’, his style is all Los Angeles. It’s expansive studio rock, but his vocal delivery staggers over crisp rimshots and a lonesome sitar and overlayed tablas, and after the soporific ‘Bridge’s comes the middle ground. Without the dynamism of players like the other three Fabs, he too easily lapses into chugging, cod-reggae jams for want of something bettter to do, like on ‘Right Side Of The Road’ and ‘Islands In The Sun’, or on the uptempo ‘Bamboula’, which benefits from an injection of Cajun spice.

By track seven you realise the LP serves as a reason to rediscover that other band of which he was once so lucky to have been a part, as the title track, ‘Postcards From Paradise’, continues the mining of the eastern melodies of late ’60s Beatles songs. It’s not so much a case of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but rather a case of a marooned member of the rock aristocracy living off the slow-to-evaporate glory of a vanished age. And consequently you want to stick Revolver on the Dansette as soon as you can.

As a piece of music, the album offers nothing new except perhaps a bold clue as to what rock aristo millionaires are capable of when they realise they’ll never be able to retire.
Yet self-indulgence is the only sin discernible as the album ends on ‘Let Love Lead’, a straight three minutes of rock’n’roll which takes the listener, by way of a blunt reminder, back to Hamburg and those studiously worn leather jackets.

Ringo’s still back there in his heart, and one cannot fault him for remembering his auspicious youth with the keenness of an elder statesman, and if he achieves anything with this album, it’s that he calls upon us to remember the roots of the musical revolution that he and his Liverpudlian brothers started all those years ago.

Postcards From Paradise is released on 30th March via Roccabella Inc.

Jason Holmes
@JasonAHolmes