It’s been six years since Paul McCartney’s previous album, and at 83 his new record The Boys of Dungeon Lane should be treated as a precious gift. Thankfully, it is an excellent album, deserving of such reverential consideration. Perhaps this should come as no surprise, as the quality of the cute Beatle’s work has been consistently good since 1997’s Flaming Pie (with the possible exception of Driving Rain, 2001) which was written during the production of the Beatles Anthology series, which lead to a sudden upswing in the quality of McCartney’s output, as if he were being challenged by his younger self.

The Boys of Dungeon Lane goes back even further, however, to a time when McCartney was a child, to the difficult working-class lives of his parents, to World War II, to meeting and getting to know John. It also has a few dangerous rock numbers and some lovely ballads. So, let’s unpack things…

The opening track As You Lie There, is one of the odder tracks of Macca’s career. It starts with Paul talking about a woman he met once and who caused him such a reaction that he spends his evenings staring up at her window. The melody is gently meandering but then suddenly turns sexily malicious, fuzz guitars blaring, as the protagonist fantasizes about her lying across her bed, obsessing over him – her stalker. The effect is thrilling. McCartney has written a lot of love ballad’s in his time, but this may be his first song about sexual obsession and predatory behaviour.

The next two tracks, Lost Horizon and The Days We Left Behind, deal with powerful childhood nostalgia. The former is a rough-hewn, middle of the road rocker about the way sounds can suddenly transport one back in time – to the lost Horizon – where a young John Lennon still lives nearby. The latter, meanwhile, is a lovely ballad about the past, a place that can never be revisited, changed or erased. The song includes the album title, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, from which some escaped, while others, fittingly, remained trapped. If nothing else, the album shows how ever-present McCartney’s roots remain in his psychological make-up.

Ripples in the Pond is a fun one. A playful pop song, with a bouncy melody and memorable lyrics about a couple deciding to keep enjoying life while they can. This is easily the most radio-friendly track on the album and reminds one of peak Tears for Fears, which is meant as a high complement. Mountain Top is also fun, though it doesn’t get to quite the same heights (hardy-ha). It has a dramatic harpsichord opening and then turns into a summer-of-love-style romantic pop-rocker. There are hippy-dippy lyrics about magic mushrooms, and flipping and tripping out, which suggest that McCartney is trying to capture the feeling of young love in his heyday. It’s fine, if a bit throwaway, and is reminiscent of the kind of tunes Frank Zappa casually composed when he allowed himself to be commercial. It even has a guitar freak-out climax.

Back to nostalgia again with Down South, which has a deliberately ragged, garage band sound, entirely fitting as it captures the memory of McCartney and Lennon getting to know each other while hitch-hiking down south, and generally bumming around. The song is a simple snapshot of the past, which gains power because of all that it led to.

The album sags slightly around the middle starting with We Two, a straight-forward, typically well-crafted, love ballad about partnership. McCartney on autopilot. Come Inside, has some hard-driving hooks, and a fine airing of the McCartney howl, but the lyrics go nowhere, while Never Know is a fairly forgettable song about the insecurity and pain being in love can cause. Young love again?

Things pick up considerably with Home to Us, a tub-thumping reunion with Ringo Starr, the two singing about their rough and ready childhoods, where they played in the street, the roses in the yard turned to dust, and the place is falling down. The music clips along, the lyrics are funny and specific, and the whole is authentic and joyful. The song is a remarkable achievement when one considers that the two song songwriters have a combined age of 168. The song is such a delight that this writer didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and promptly did both. Who knows whether we’ll see the like of this song again.

Life Can Be Hard is a pastiche music-hall song, the kind of thing Paul has done throughout his career, dating back to the days of When I’m 64, although here the recreation of a dated style makes the song seem a fitting relic of the past, rather than a novelty song on an otherwise modern album, as had been the case previously.

First Star of the Night is a beautiful song, with a sweet melody and lyric about the gentle return of hope. This is a perfect example of McCartney at his best, taking an upbeat premise, a simple, yet memorable lyric, and a lovely melody to create something that feels like it always existed. The song is a jewel.

The last two songs pull us back into the working-class domesticity of McCartney’s childhood. Salesman Saint, gives an atmospheric almost doom-laden picture of a young married couple (McCartney’s parents?) at the end of World War II. They live on the edge of town, but with all the roads going in, and are just scraping by, fuelled by coffee and cigarettes. There’s a slightly frenzied quality to the music, created by the addition of horns playing in a big-band style. McCartney’s dad was a salesman and a band leader. The song tangibly creates the mood of a place and a time, grim, yet with a necessary moments of wild escape. Momma Gets By is a soaring ballad that recalls the Beatles classic She’s Leaving Home: musically, in the sincerity of the emotion, and the clear pictures that it paints. The song is about a mother who works hard and loves her husband even though she barely sees him, who recognises that he is a complicated man, but loves him so much that she forgives him his faults. The sting in the tail is that the poppa likes to “get high”, which could be interpreted in many ways. The song gains its power by showing the world through the eyes of a sincere loving soul, by portraying emotional behaviour that we recognise in ourselves and others, and by painting a realistic setting in which to place the song. It is a small, heart-felt masterpiece.

McCartney is 83, and yet, with co-producer Andrew Watt, he has delivered one of the strongest albums of his post-Beatles career, certainly his best since Memory Almost. It is heavy with nostalgia, yet this is sincere rather than cloying, and achieves an authentic, lived-in quality that creates a powerful sense of the past. The album also has exciting hints of sex and danger, that add spice. Yes, The Boys of Dungeon Lane is a gift indeed. Treasure it.