McCartney widens Dungeon Lane with session leftovers

The flip mix of his Ringo Starr duet rides with them from track 15, and the marble double LP is still bound for December.

Paul McCartney's expanded edition of The Boys of Dungeon Lane is available to stream from today, with three songs held back from the original sessions now sitting in the running order from track 15. The new titles are 'City Fox', 'One Night Stand' and 'Chelsea Boots'. They arrive with a 'flip mix' of 'Home to Us', the duet with Ringo Starr that already featured on the June album, this time with their parts reversed.

The drop comes four months after The Boys of Dungeon Lane first came out. McCartney drew the extra material from the same work with Andrew Watt that shaped the parent record. That album carried his first-ever duet with Starr and set its gaze on a nostalgic reading of his Liverpool childhood; the three additions keep to that same ground rather than striking out in a new direction.

When the expansion was announced at the start of October, the plan was clear: a digital edition on 7 October, followed by a marble double LP in December. The streaming version is the one now live. The original album topped the UK albums chart and is nominated for the Mercury Prize, so the extra songs land on a record that has already had a loud public life in the months since its release.

Same sessions, wider frame

McCartney is never short of songs, and pulling further pieces from the Watt sessions is of a piece with how he has often treated a finished album — as a centre, not a sealed box. What listeners get here is not a standalone EP but an extension of the June sequence. The new songs begin at track 15 on the expanded stream. The flipped 'Home to Us' sits with them, offering another pass at a collaboration that marked a first for McCartney and Starr on record together.

That flip is a modest device with a clear purpose. It does not replace the original duet; it turns it around, so the balance of the two voices shifts while the song remains the same. For an audience that already knows the June cut, it is a reason to listen again. 'City Fox', 'One Night Stand' and 'Chelsea Boots' then fill in what was left off when the first running order was set — session work from the same room, aimed at the same childhood terrain.

The nostalgic Liverpool thread was already the spine of The Boys of Dungeon Lane. Holding three further songs to that theme, rather than bolting on unrelated leftovers, keeps the expanded edition coherent. It is still one album, grown by a few tracks, not a vault dump with no common centre. The craft on show is continuity: same producer partnership, same autobiographical frame, same willingness to let a finished sequence breathe once the public has lived with it.

December still to come

The marble double LP remains due in December. That pressing will give the expanded running order a physical form after the digital version has had a head start. Nothing further from the sessions has been trailed beyond the three songs now streaming, and the next fixed point on the calendar is that vinyl edition.

Four months on from the original release, the door on the Dungeon Lane sessions stands a little more open. The chart-topping, Mercury-nominated album has three new companions and a reworked duet; the December LP will close the physical side of the expansion. For now, the work is on the stream, from track 15, in the same world the June record already mapped.