I was somewhat disappointed when I saw a track listing of the songs on this CD....I had heard that Macca was working with David Gilmour and Ian Paice and I immediately thought, "These are the types of guys that will force Paulie to dig deep into his songwriting bag for some REALLY great tunes....". I saw only 3 originals and a bunch of covers. I'd not heard before then that this was a retro-style project...
Fast-forward to release day...I did purchase this disc on day of issue, despite my misgivings..."Flaming Pie" had been so instantly likeable and I thought this might be a step backwards. I unwrapped the CD and slid the disc into my dash....and a tatooed arm reached out of my car stereo and slapped me silly for about an hour!
The easiest thing in the world for seasoned pros to do in a situation like "Run" would be note-perfect renditions of some old favorites, with the enthusiasm ratcheted up a bit, like the "Russian Album", which I liked a bunch. Not these guys...most of these covers take the original intent and take it somewhere else..."All Shook Up" beats the fool out of the Elvis rendition. "Honey Hush", "She Said Yeah"....now that's some dang fine Rock!
That said, my two faves on this album are two of the more subdued tunes on here, "Blue Jean Bop" and "Movie Magg". The former has some killer slapback echo on the vocal without being distracting, while the latter is a completely disarming tune from the late, and serverely underappreciated Carl Perkins.
My only complaint about this collection was this: I am a music dynamics freak, and quite a few songs on this CD sound REALLY compressed, with a very narrow dynamics range, almost like an AM station...perhaps that was the intention, but why does it only happen on some of the tunes? "She Said Yeah" likely was most affected. If it isn't a production choice, then how'd it happen? The performance was brilliant, though.
