"Red Rose Speedway" (1973) by Paul McCartney

After truly abysmal and pointless album "Wild life" McCartney leaves rough-and-simple home-grown demo sound and turns to truly professional production where this time everything is wrapped in a shiny cellophane. To be honest, I actually liked simplicity of his solo debuts (1970 and 1971 albums) so this comes more as glitzy polish than some real artistic improvement. He always had a ear for a good melody and quirky sounds popping from everywhere - check "Big Barn Bed" that sounds like a Beach Boys homage to me - but besides now worn out and tired ballad "My Love" that was calculated step into what he knew mainstream audience expected of him (and it paid off) I don't hear anything so exciting here. 

It is a pleasant album that has interesting snippets of ideas all over but nothing truly memorable - perhaps I actually prefer earlier, raw and simple work done without all these gadgets and echoes. The final medley is the only thing I cared for here and is lovely, happy and bouncy piece of music where several extremely sunny melodies are interwoven together. The whole album baffles me a bit because I kind of find it pointless unless its a prelude to masterpiece that comes afterwards. Perhaps McCartney simply spread himself too thin on many occasions and never finalized his ideas to the perfect endings.