Chaos and Creation in the Backyard

Whenever I read track listings from soon-to-be-released projects by recording artists I enjoy, I'm like the amateur filmmaker who made his own $20,000-version of Star Wars 3 and put it out on the Internet before George Lucas' film went to the theaters: I try to make guesses about what the real CDs will be like. I'm never right. But it's part of the fun of being a fan. (Does anybody else do this?)

I've been composing some songs in my mind during lull times today--in the shower, in my van, on the walking track. That's because of a new CD to be released this fall.

On the day when there was so much chaos in London, Paul McCartney announced the name and track listing of his latest LP, set for release on September 12. It will be called, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.

The title, as well as the names of several track names, intrigue me.

The title itself evokes the first Biblical creation account, found in Genesis 1. There, God is portrayed as bearing His Spirit or unleashing His breath over the face of "the deep." In the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, with which people of Jesus' first-century generation would have been familiar, the word for deep would have been bathos, a term denoting a roiling, death-infested storm. Chaos. From this chaos, God creates anew. It's the same thing God does today when His Spirit, bearing witness of what Jesus does for us, comes to us and gives us new life.

Whether McCartney's LP will bear a relationship to all of this, I don't know, of course. I'm just pumped to hear it.

Song titles and their times, according to the release from PaulMcCartney.com, include:

Fine Line 3:05
How Kind Of You 4:47
Jenny Wren 3:47
At The Mercy 2:38
Friends To Go 2:43
English Tea 2:12
Too Much Rain 3:24
A Certain Softness 2:42
Riding To Vanity Fair 5:07
Follow Me 2:31
Promise To You Girl 3:10
This Never Happened Before 3:26
Anyway 3:50

Total Running Time: 46:54