SKAD13's Full Review: Flaming Pie by Paul McCartney
Let's not quibble with terms such as "Beatlesque." Be grateful that Flaming Pie marks a return to Paul McCartney's strengths: simple, catchy tunes and sentiment with restraint.
"I go back so far, I'm in front of me," sings McCartney on this album, and his best work has always resulted from him taking a break from pop craftsmanship and simply being reflective. As with his excellent '80s albums Tug of War and Flowers in the Dirt, Flaming Pie shows McCartney caught off-guard, nudged ever so gently against the wall by his mortality.
And as with those '80s albums, McCartney benefits from playing with some heavy hitters. This time around, that includes Steve Miller (in best "Fly Like an Eagle" mode on "If You Wanna" and "Used to Be Bad"), ELO and Beatles Anthology producer Jeff Lynne, Ringo Starr (in his first writing collaboration with McCartney), and Beatles producer George Martin. McCartney's wife Linda and son James also join the mix.
With so many golden-era personnel on hand, it's no surprise that much of Flaming Pie is nostalgia-tinged. The title track comes from John Lennon's quip that the Beatles' name came from a vision of a man on a flaming pie. Accordingly, it's the most Lennon-like of any of Paul's songs, full of pungent melody and wordplay. And "Great Day," the album's lovely finale, used to be performed by Paul and Linda for their kids. It comes off like a Beatles answer to Rosemary Clooney's old hit "It's Gonna Be a Great Day."
And if some of the songs seem to overstay their welcome (as with the drawn-out climaxes of "The Song We Were Singing" and "Really Love You"), at least none of them have McCartney's most irritating trait: singing with a catch in his throat, as though the song's emotion overwhelmed him and is meant to do the same for us. Here, for a change, McCartney lets the songs sell themselves.
For a few years, McCartney was getting into quite a rut: releasing a new album of half-baked tunes, then doing a world tour in which he mostly reprised Beatles songs, then releasing a double-album of the tour.
Flaming Pie isn't quite a Band on the Run, but it shows McCartney again working to create songs worthy of his vast catalog of past hits, and mostly succeeding.
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