Released in conjunction with that book, and sharing its title, Wings is the first look back on Paul's time in Wings with a fixed dedication to keeping its Wingsness pure. There's no "Maybe I'm Amazed", no "Uncle Albert", no "Coming Up" to be heard across its three LPs of undiluted Paul, Linda, Denny, and the rest of the Wingsers who passed through the band's ranks during their nine-or-so years as one of the hugest bands of the seventies.
So are those solo songs that bookend the Wings era missed? When room is made for so much material, it does seem a little incomplete to not tuck in such major McCartney numbers. But without anything from McCartney, Ram, McCartney II, it does make room for a lot more stuff. So along with the usual smash hits, which sometimes didn't represent McCartney at his very best (I certainly never needed to hear that mush-pie "My Love" again), there are some cool lesser known cuts to give a broader picture of what he and his mates were up to in the seventies. Naturally, the majority come from Band on the Run, without question the most consistently fine Wings album, although that source is over-exploited with seven of its ten tracks on board. It would have been great to spare a few of those tracks to make room for some underrated oddities like "To You", "Spin It On", or "So Glad to See You" (I confess...I'm a big Back to the Egg booster), but it's nice that top-shelf relative obscurities such as "Call Me Back Again", "Soily" (the One Hand Clapping version), and "I've Had Enough" will get heard by a wider audience.
Sound wise, a lot of this will be familiar to those who are already Wings-faithful since the tracks have all been pulled from previously released remasters spanning 2010 to 2022. That variety of sources spanning such a long period also accounts for certain sound fluctuations from track to track, but it generally sounds good because those previously issued remastered albums sound good. Since London Town and Back to the Egg still haven't been afforded recent remasters, the half-dozen tracks pulled from those records apparently first appeared in McCartney's singles box set released in 2022.
The three LP-edition (there's also a single disc edition with a real head-scratcher of a track list) is packaged in a slipcase and includes an illustrated poster and a booklet with artwork, notes, and an intro by Paul. I received the black vinyl edition for review, but there's also a limited edition colored vinyl one with an extra poster and some stickers.
