I picked up the vinyl yesterday. First spin this morning.
For starters, the packaging of this reissue is amazingly high quality. The jacket artwork is really beautiful when printed on glossy paper. The extra heavy cardboard is a nice touch. Makes it feel like they really cared a lot about making it special for the buyers. Vinyl is also very flat and dead quiet during playback. This is not meant to be a full review, just some things I noted on first listen.
This has never been a favorite album for me. Macca's solo work has always sounded a bit "light" to me. He has some great songs but for me his magic has always been the chemistry with Lennon. As a solo artist he has not captured my imagination as he did with the Beatles. The only reason I bought this CD back in the 90's was for the collaboration with Elvis Costello. I have been a die hard EC fan for the past 30+ years so I consider myself a completest of his work. I consider the best songs on this album the ones he co-wrote with Costello.
The sound quality of this issue is really good. I need to spin it a few more times to give a better evaluation, but I can say they did a great job remastering it at Abbey Road. The music sounds more liquid and natural to me than it did in it's digital release. It certainly should, so maybe this isn't saying a whole lot, but I feel like I am hearing this record for the first time how it should have sounded all along, so I guess that is something remarkable.
I really bought this for disc two, with all the demos and outtakes, but I haven't yet had time to listen to it. I will probably do that tonight.
More to come...
