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".

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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".

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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".

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