Flowers in the dirt

"After a spell of middling albums - the previous really satisfying set was 1982's Tug Of War - Paul McCartney was clearly determined to make Flowers In The Dirt a return to form ... enlisting a spikey sparring partner, this time Elvis Costello ... Discs two and three here are given over to their two demo sessions, properly mastered. The first ranks among the strongest post- Beatle solo work out there - acoustic, raw reminders of his undiminished melodic and vocal prowess. Indicative of the quality on offer is an impassioned, stripped-back The Lovers That Never Were, on which there's a real sense of the partnership clicking and that makes the official version (from 1993's Off The Ground) sound rather phoned in".

"The reissue of his 1989 collaboration with Elvis Costello reveals the art underneath its schlocky gloss. It is also the rarest of things: a McCartney record where you can sense his need to be loved ... The recently released Super Deluxe Edition contains full-band demos from 1988 ... That's the divide between the initial release of Flowers in the Dirt and the reissue: the 1989 LP is made for a mass audience, while the reissue reveals the art lurking underneath the gloss".

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"The reissue of his 1989 collaboration with Elvis Costello reveals the art underneath its schlocky gloss. It is also the rarest of things: a McCartney record where you can sense his need to be loved ... The recently released Super Deluxe Edition contains full-band demos from 1988 ... That's the divide between the initial release of Flowers in the Dirt and the reissue: the 1989 LP is made for a mass audience, while the reissue reveals the art lurking underneath the gloss".

Read review