McCartney: Deluxe Edition
McCartney II: Deluxe Edition
MPL-Concord Music Group

There aren’t two more argued-over albums in the Beatles’ extended catalog than the first two solo albums by Paul McCartney (or second and fourth, depending on where you stand with his orchestral score to the 1966 Roy Boulting film The Family Way and his weirdo masterpiece Ram with wife Linda in 1971). Released 10 years apart from one another, both McCartney and McCartney II each saw Macca paint two sonic self-portraits at incredible different stages in his storied career.

Recorded at his Scottish coast home and all on his own in concurrence with Phil Spector’s incessant tinkering of the Fabs’ farewell classic Let It Be, 1970’s McCartney marked his departure from the band he started with John Lennon, George Harrison, Stu Sutcliffe and Pete Best in Liverpool in 1960. To even make it official, Paul tendered his resignation in the form of a Q&A included in the press materials for the advance copy of the album, surrounding its release in a whirlwind of rumor and controversy. The fact that Macca refused to change the LP’s April 17th release date it shared with Let It Be, thus causing the Beatles to push the album back to a May date, certainly didn’t help matters either. But at its root, it is a very inward, off-the-cuff collection of songs that stood in stark contrast with the three albums recorded by his estranged bandmates at the time: John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band, George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and Ringo Starr’s own solo debut, the orchestral set of pop standards Sentimental Journey, not to mention the drummer’s brilliantly bizarre country turn Beaucoups of Blues, which came out later that fall.

Though there is clear evidence of Macca the hit machine on here when you listen to the cache of pure pop chestnuts, namely “Maybe I’m Amazed,” “Every Night,” the heartstoppingly gorgeous “Junk” and the Let It Be sessions outtake “Teddy Boy,” it is the intrinsic, sketch-like instrumental jams that truly define the core of McCartney. Tracks like “Valentine Day,” “Momma Miss America” and the breakbeat treasure “Kreen-Akrore” rank amongst the likes of Harrison’s Electronic Sound and Lennon’s Two Virgins as some of the strangest, most unorthodox music crafted by any member of the Beatles. If this kind of stuff were recorded today, it wouldn’t be outlandish to mistakenly credit it to the likes of folks like Jim O’Rourke or Jon Brion. The deluxe edition of the album includes a second disc containing a rather chintzy portion of bonus material, including a pair of studio outtakes (“Suicide”, “Don’t Cry Baby”), a version of “Maybe I’m Amazed” from the One Hand Clapping television special, three album tracks performed at Wings’ final concert in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1979 and the demo version of the cutting room nugget “Women Kind.” You also get a DVD that contains a beautifully animated video short on the making of McCartney, the official video for “Amazed” and footage from One Hand Clapping as well as LP-oriented highlights from the 1979 Concert for the People of Kampuchea as well as Paul’s memorable 1991 appearance on MTV Unplugged.

It would be another nine years before another proper Macca solo album would surface in lieu of the former Fab’s prioritization of Wings throughout most of the 1970s. But when McCartney II emerged in the wake of his second band breakup in a decade, he did so in full embrace of the burgeoning new wave movement hitting its creative crest in 1980. Once again playing everything by himself, traditional drums, guitars, piano and bass were replaced by modular synthesizers, effects pedals, drum machines and vocoders. And, with the exception of the bubbly hit single “Coming Up” and the gauzy Back to the Egg leftover “Waterfalls” (where TLC nabbed the hook for their hit 1995 song of the same name), the majority of _ McCartney II_ is pretty much oddball electronic pop that took the majority of Beatles fans by surprise, many of whom were put off by the album’s futuristic bent. As it turned out, most people were not ready for the bleeps and bloops of songs like “Temporary Secretary” and the controversial “Frozen Jap” (accompanied by an ill-advised pulled face photo on the inner sleeve of the record), resulting in the album getting cast into cut-out bin obscurity for the majority of the 80s and 90s, save for an elite legion of adventurous fans who hail it was visionary. That is, of course, until the last decade, when the LP began to pick up steam as an inspirational reference point for a whole new generation of IDM and bedroom electro acts for whom Macca’s experiments with machinery has provided an ample template. The deluxe edition of McCartney II is a far more generous affair than that of its predecessor, primarily due to the fact that the album was originally intended to be a double LP. In addition to a DVD that contains a rather bland 25-minute interview with Sir Tim Rice for the BBC where Rice confronts him about the controversy behind the meaning of “Frozen Jap” (and whether it was a response to his marijuana bust in Japan around this time), the videos for “Coming Up,” “Waterfalls” and Paul’s holiday classic “Wonderful Christmastime,” a Making Of short for the “Coming Up” video as well as footage of McCartney performing the song at the Kampuchea concert. Meanwhile, the bonus audio is spread across two extra CDs here, presenting the album in its most completed form to be officially released, highlighted by the 10-minute chillwave precursor “Secret Friend,” full-length versions of key LP tracks “Front Parlour,” “Jap” and “Darkroom” and the extended version of the MOR dub masterpiece “Check My Machine.”

Regardless of where you stand on either title, you cannot deny the significance of both McCartney and McCartney II in the artistic oeuvre of Paul McCartney’s monumental four-decade body of work as a solo act. The only question remains is whether or not we may see an even more daring McCartney III before Sir Paul decides to enter his golden years in the comfort of retired life.