He, his wife Linda, and former Moody Blue Denny Laine would form the core of Wings. In its first iteration, drummer Denny Seiwell completed the line-up. The critics were neither fooled nor amused. Once again, McCartney was accused of wasting his considerable talents and foisting a half-baked record on gullible fans. Once again, he was accused of sloppiness, and this time he had no excuse since he was working with a proper band and not merely playing with himself.
However, whereas McCartney can be a bit of a chore to get through because so many unfinished song sketches and limp and joyless instrumentals impede the ways to good songs like "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "Junk", Wings' first album is charming because there is a spark in its long-winded jams that a one-man band can't fake. McCartney is not really sure what it wants to be; it has sketches, fleshed-out songs, and jams, but none of it hangs together well. Wild Life knows: it's a jam album, a document of a new band finding itself. There are a few proper songs on the album, but even these are mostly excuses to jam. Wings turns Mickey & Sylvia's "Love Is Strange" into a sly reggae run-through, get sufficiently worked up for the churning title track--an early hint of Paul and Linda's animal activism, and perhaps a slight dig at John Lennon, with its incongruous complaints of "political nonsense"-- and offer a more pointed plea for reconciliation with Lennon with the haunting "Dear Friend". In the cases of "Mumbo" and "Bip Bop", McCartney couldn't even be bothered to write words. The only properly tidy songs are "I Am Your Singer" and "Tomorrow", which is the closest thing Wild Life has to a classic McCartney hit (like McCartney, the album yielded no actual singles). Frankly, McCartney should have continued his glossolalia with "I Am Your Singer" because that song's lyric is one of his most cringingly cutesy.
The rawness of Wild Life rescues the rest of the material from similar tooth-rotting cutesiness, even when McCartney starts bip-bopping. That rawness is well captured on a new half-speed mastered vinyl reissue. Using "high-resolution transfers of the original master tapes," according to the copy on the obi wrapped along the cover's edge, Wild Life has strong bass that never distorts or over-powers the music and warm highs that never pierce. Aside from the bass, I always find that the drums are the best indicators of the quality of a master, and the drums sound deep, dimensional, and present throughout, particularly on "Love Is Strange". My one gripe is that there is some inner groove distortion, but the vinyl is flat, with a well-centered spindle hole. Overall, this is a great sounding edition of a somewhat misunderstood record.
