I like this album, it doesn't jump out at you, but it drew me in.
I was really intrigued by the title "Chaos & Creation" sounds huge, cosmic, mind boggling "in the Backyard" sounds homely, down to earth & casual, does Paul's art combine the two, maybe. Paul is an amazingly huge figure in popular entertainment, a key element in the Beatles a very successful solo career, yet a lot of his work feels very familiar and close to us, he feels kind of like a friend rather than someone on a pedestal.
So even before I put the album on I was intrigued and then this is another of those Paul albums where he plays nearly everything himself and it is pretty inventive with it.
I think upon first listen not everything gelled for me, yet I couldn't help playing it again and again. A lot of the lyrics seemed kind of vague, "chaotic" perhaps, there were odd experiments going on i.e. the loops on "How kind of you" the opener "Fine Line" was really attractive with it's mesmerising piano pounding.
I have come to really love "English Tea" I love it when Paul does deliberately English stuff, I'm also a huge fan of the song "London Town". I will say I don't think this has got the great songs that Flaming Pie has, or is as instantly appealing as Paul's subsequent album "Memory almost Full" but it does have a strong album feel to it and I like listening to the whole album through. It is now sometime since I had those first intrigued listens and i haven't listened to it a lot since then, but i put it on to listen to it again before writing this review and I found the songs had now sunk into me, they are part of life and part of my appreciation of Paul's art.
In conclusion this is an album, I'm glad Paul made, I still find it ambiguous, I'm not sure Paul knew what he was trying to express but I do feel that he had some compulsion to express it and I like the ambiguity now. Yes there is chaos and creativity here and it feels homely and personal to me. To draw on a later song of Paul's I feel "Gratitude".