Say what you will about Paul McCartney, he has impeccable timing. Shortly after the Anthology collections once again made the Beatles the world's biggest-selling recording act, McCartney released Flaming Pie, a strong record that gave him his highest solo chart placing (#2) in an almost thirty-year solo career. You don't need to be a media analyst to detect a cause-and-effect relationship there, particularly as 1989's Flowers in the Dirt, an equally strong album supported by a gargantuan world tour, barely made a nick in the charts. With the re-release of Yellow Submarine, the world is once again in love with the Beatles, and again Paul McCartney has a new album out.

But whereas Flaming Pie showed McCartney's pop craftsmanship at its most relaxed and unforced, Run Devil Run showcases McCartney the rocker, tearing through a set of mostly non-originals with a voice that's pure rock n' roll joy. Pretty much everyone from Joan Jett to McCartney's ex-partner John Lennon have released a "covers album," but this record is more than contractual filler or nostalgia exercise. It's a testament to the vitality of early rock n' roll, the best such record anyone's made in a long time--for all I know, maybe ever.

Perhaps it's because McCartney, virtually alone among those of his sixties peers still living, instinctively understands that rock n' roll wasn't really about rebellion: it was about having fun. His is essentially an easygoing personality--frustrating for critics who like a little grit with their music, but perfect for material of this era. Try to imagine anyone else recording these songs--a mix of Carl Perkins, Elvis and Chuck Berry standards and a generous handful of stellar one-hits--without turning them into either a tired joke or a way-too-earnest "tribute." Neil Young? Paul Simon? Brian Wilson? Dylan? The imagination fails in each case: either they don't have the requisite rock n' roll chops (Simon, Wilson) or they're so shrouded in mystique that their own legend would obscure the material (Young, Dylan). McCartney, of course, carries quite a load of baggage himself, but on Run Devil Run he shucks it off with an ease that's amazing: you're not listening to the guy who wrote "Penny Lane" or "Yesterday" or "Hey Jude," who co-fronted the most inventive band in pop music history; you're listening to a guy who loves to play rock n' roll, and who does it with a passion that none of his peers can match.

To emulate the spontaneity of early Beatles recording sessions, McCartney and his pick-up band worked under a strict "no thinking" policy: show up, tune up, learn the song, lay it down, repeat. The results speak for themselves in a series of straight-ahead, heartful performances, from the perfect rockabilly of "Blue Jean Bop" and "Movie Magg" to the throat-tearing rave-ups of "What It Is" (one of three McCartney originals), "She Said Yeah" and "Shake a Hand," the last of which proving that McCartney's Little Richard imitation remains unsurpassed after more than thirty years. A few welcome liberties were permitted here and there, most successfully on Chuck Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," now as good a zydeco party song as you'll hear. "All Shook Up" is a hell of a lot faster and more manic than the original, while "Lonesome Town" benefits mightily from a doo-wop makeover.

Special mention must be made of "No Other Baby," an all but forgotten skiffle classic. McCartney slows it down and strips it bare, laying down a chugging one-note bass line that endows the generic lyrics with almost menacing gravity. Many people have speculated how McCartney, recently deprived of the wife he loved dearly, would deal with Linda's absence once he finally returned to the studio. Most listeners were bracing themselves for an album of ballads, solemn and moving and dull, and it may yet happen. But in returning to the music that nurtured him as a boy, and in particular to "No Other Baby," McCartney creates a tribute to Linda better than any he could have written himself. For when you've lost the woman you loved most, what else is there to say but:

Well lots of other women say "Be my daddy too"
Yeah lots of other women say "Be my daddy too"
But I tell 'em I don't want no other baby but you
I say I don't want no other baby but you ...