Wild Life
With Paul McCartney's new album, Memory Almost Full, due out the first Tuesday of June, this month seems as good a time as any to review Macca's solo career. I am a fan, not a fanatic; I'm in awe of the guy's talent, though, and find a lot of creative inspiration in his work. I don't own all of his solo albums but I own a lot of them. I'll be writing about them, in the order they were released, over the next few weeks.
It's difficult to imagine an album like Wild Life being released by a major label today; even in its day it had a lot of folks scratching their heads. Recorded in three days by a band that had barely played together before sessions began, Wild Life is a defiantly unpolished record, to say the least. That holds as true for the songwriting as for the performances. If the goal was to create an album that made McCartney sound like a finished, polished record, well, mission accomplished.
Give McCartney credit for not trying to dress this album up. No effort is made to masquerade this album as anything other than what it is, and that holds true right from the opening track, "Mumbo," the lyric to which consists entirely of improvised nonsense. It's not bad, exactly; the groove, the guitar riffs, and the churning rhythm guitars are all quite satisfying. But it's more the germ of a good song than the finished product. Like most of this record, it left me wondering why someone of McCartney's stature and talent would release something like this. This is the sort of thing that belongs on a collector's edition CD box set, not at the front of your brand new album.
You have to figure he just didn't care, a suspicion reinforced by the second track, "Bip Bop," whose lyric makes only slightly more sense than does its predecessor's. Again, it's a nice groove but there's nothing special about the track. By the third track, a hyper-synocpated cover of Mickey and Sylvia's 1957 hit "Love is Strange," it's pretty clear that either McCartney is saving his best for the end or this album just flat out sucks. The title track, a seemingly endless three-chord vamp over which McCartney sings impassionedly about zoo animals, does nothing to change this impression. At least this one has a really nice background vocal arrangement.
Track 5, "Some People Never Know," finally demonstrates some craft. It's a sweet love song with a simple, lovely lyric and a very pretty melody. Linda's vocal is pitchy but, as on much of this album, has a Mo Tucker-like quality that doesn't annoy, which is probably the best one can hope for. (I feel for the lady; she's not a musician at all and yet here she is in a band with one of the world's greatest and most famous pop stars. I try to appreciate her efforts for what they are and admire the McCartneys' approach to handling the challenges of celebrity marriage. And mostly I'm grateful she's not Yoko.)
Track 6, "I Am Your Singer," continues the momentum started by track 5, except with Linda taking a more prominent vocal part. It's a very pretty number, although nothing that stands out especially in the McCartney canon. The remainder of the album consists of reprises of "Mumbo" and "Bip Bop," each under a minute in length, a nifty piano pop song called "Tomorrow" (that, sadly, doesn't contain any apparent references to "Yesterday" but, happily, includes one of McCartney's gorgeous patented Beach Boys-influenced background vocal arrangements) and "Dear Friend," a piano dirge that many praise as a classic musical missive to John Lennon but which, frankly, leaves me cold.
And that's it. The whole thing clocks in at about 38 minutes, but it seems to pass more quickly because so much of it drifts by without your noticing it. When I read Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay a few years back, I felt at the end as though I'd swallowed a basketball. I was extremely full, yet knew that one carefully placed pin prick would reveal just how little I'd just ingested. After listening to Wild Life repeatedly, I feel as though I've swallowed an inflatable golf ball.
The current reissue of Wild Life includes some great bonus tracks, including the rowdy stomp "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" and a remarkably enjoyable version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (I shit you not). I won't bore you with the story of how McCartney came to record a version of this nursery school classic--read about it here if you don't already know about it--but I will note that its inclusion points up what's wrong with Wild Life. If McCartney can work such magic with this little bit of nothing, why is he foisting off stuff like "Mumbo" and "Bip Bop"? Ditto for the remaining bonus tracks "Little Woman Love" and "Mama's Little Girl," throwaways that are nonetheless strong enough that they would fit comfortably in the track list for Ram. Either could have replaced almost any track on Wild Life and, in so doing, improved the album.
It's difficult to imagine an album like Wild Life being released by a major label today; even in its day it had a lot of folks scratching their heads. Recorded in three days by a band that had barely played together before sessions began, Wild Life is a defiantly unpolished record, to say the least. That holds as true for the songwriting as for the performances. If the goal was to create an album that made McCartney sound like a finished, polished record, well, mission accomplished.
Give McCartney credit for not trying to dress this album up. No effort is made to masquerade this album as anything other than what it is, and that holds true right from the opening track, "Mumbo," the lyric to which consists entirely of improvised nonsense. It's not bad, exactly; the groove, the guitar riffs, and the churning rhythm guitars are all quite satisfying. But it's more the germ of a good song than the finished product. Like most of this record, it left me wondering why someone of McCartney's stature and talent would release something like this. This is the sort of thing that belongs on a collector's edition CD box set, not at the front of your brand new album.
You have to figure he just didn't care, a suspicion reinforced by the second track, "Bip Bop," whose lyric makes only slightly more sense than does its predecessor's. Again, it's a nice groove but there's nothing special about the track. By the third track, a hyper-synocpated cover of Mickey and Sylvia's 1957 hit "Love is Strange," it's pretty clear that either McCartney is saving his best for the end or this album just flat out sucks. The title track, a seemingly endless three-chord vamp over which McCartney sings impassionedly about zoo animals, does nothing to change this impression. At least this one has a really nice background vocal arrangement.
Track 5, "Some People Never Know," finally demonstrates some craft. It's a sweet love song with a simple, lovely lyric and a very pretty melody. Linda's vocal is pitchy but, as on much of this album, has a Mo Tucker-like quality that doesn't annoy, which is probably the best one can hope for. (I feel for the lady; she's not a musician at all and yet here she is in a band with one of the world's greatest and most famous pop stars. I try to appreciate her efforts for what they are and admire the McCartneys' approach to handling the challenges of celebrity marriage. And mostly I'm grateful she's not Yoko.)
Track 6, "I Am Your Singer," continues the momentum started by track 5, except with Linda taking a more prominent vocal part. It's a very pretty number, although nothing that stands out especially in the McCartney canon. The remainder of the album consists of reprises of "Mumbo" and "Bip Bop," each under a minute in length, a nifty piano pop song called "Tomorrow" (that, sadly, doesn't contain any apparent references to "Yesterday" but, happily, includes one of McCartney's gorgeous patented Beach Boys-influenced background vocal arrangements) and "Dear Friend," a piano dirge that many praise as a classic musical missive to John Lennon but which, frankly, leaves me cold.
And that's it. The whole thing clocks in at about 38 minutes, but it seems to pass more quickly because so much of it drifts by without your noticing it. When I read Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay a few years back, I felt at the end as though I'd swallowed a basketball. I was extremely full, yet knew that one carefully placed pin prick would reveal just how little I'd just ingested. After listening to Wild Life repeatedly, I feel as though I've swallowed an inflatable golf ball.
The current reissue of Wild Life includes some great bonus tracks, including the rowdy stomp "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" and a remarkably enjoyable version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (I shit you not). I won't bore you with the story of how McCartney came to record a version of this nursery school classic--read about it here if you don't already know about it--but I will note that its inclusion points up what's wrong with Wild Life. If McCartney can work such magic with this little bit of nothing, why is he foisting off stuff like "Mumbo" and "Bip Bop"? Ditto for the remaining bonus tracks "Little Woman Love" and "Mama's Little Girl," throwaways that are nonetheless strong enough that they would fit comfortably in the track list for Ram. Either could have replaced almost any track on Wild Life and, in so doing, improved the album.
Labels: McCartney catalogue review, music
posted by Tom Meltzer @ 3:18 PM
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