Venus and Mars

Wings is a weird group. I flew right past them in my post-Beatles excursions, opting George Harrison’s Moog experimentalism on the last side of “All Things Must Pass”, the John Lennon solo albums, and—of course—Paul’s proto-indie home recorded masterpiece Ram. But so many Wings records were moldering in the collection at the bottom of the stairs, ready to be spun up at a moment’s notice, and yet I never did.

Through some unspoken received wisdom, no doubt from my mother, I knew that The Beatles were defined partially by the push-and-pull of primary songwriters’ creative spirit. I also understood that--in Wings--McCartney is no longer working against a natural foil who can puncture his ever-ballooning sentimentality, reject an overdressed arrangement, or insist on a harder edge. He can do whatever he wants: write the song, stack the harmonies, arrange the horns, make the medley, add the reprise. It’s dangerous, that lack of resistance—it might cause an artist to lean into their worst impulses and go for baroque instead of broke.

Venus and Mars is an album of abundance. McCartney, Joe English, Jimmy McCulloch, Denny Laine, and Linda McCartney do not leave much unoccupied air in the mix, and the compression helps it sound rock radio ready. In that sense—the dense instrumentation and hyped-up sonics—the music can sound oddly contemporary. The closing coda of “Rock Show,” with close-miked texture and overdriven momentum, has a specific kind of scuzzy intimacy. Scuff it up a little and it might resemble an outtake from a Mac DeMarco record: a loose, warm, mildly blown-out piece of private studio pleasure. “Letting Go,” meanwhile, rides a chugging blues-rock groove that could almost become a Black Keys song if it were stripped of its theatricality and its horn adornments.

Though the good moments in the good tunes echo throughout time and clearly inspire other artists, the album’s weaker moments are recognizably McCartneyesque. “You Gave Me the Answer” supplies the obligatory old-timey pastiche, all jaunty music-hall oompah band and self-conscious silliness; “Magneto and Titanium Man” follows with comic-book whimsy, cloyingly so—this is a song that make listeners wish someone would take the toys away. But McCartney’s career has always included the desire to be earnest and ridiculous all at once; Wings makes that contradiction impossible to ignore.

Venus and Mars begins with a cold open: Paul McCartney is on the move, ready to take the stage. It’s something we’re familiar with at this point, since we’ve all heard Sgt. Pepper. The title song is not quite about a concert itself, but it feels like the moment just before one. In some ways it suggests that The Beatles was simply a warm-up act to this new main event, that Paul is ready to get back to being the hardest working cute boy in showbiz. Sometimes leaning into your true nature of being a lot works for an artist, just like this time.

Verdict: Keep

Should “Magneto and Titanium Man” be interpolated for the X-Men theme song?