Wings – London Town Review

Having a two-year break after their biggest (and worst) album to contend with band departures and domestic duties is the best thing that could have happened for Wings. Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney and Denny Laine found themselves a three-piece once more, and it means London Town is as stripped-back as can be. After the blowout of Wings at the Speed of Sound, a more connected, grounded, effort was necessary. They had blitzed the feel-good factor and filled stadiums across the globe. For fans who wanted more of that Band on the Run energy, that sense of creating despite all the problems, London Town is right there. It is a far cry from the qualities of the 1973 classic, but there is a spirit within London Town which was thoroughly lacking on the preceding album. What McCartney, McCartney and Laine get to grips with here is the sound the ex-Beatles member would use for many of his pop album releases. 

All the more reason to give London Town a spin, then. An origin of sorts for the instrumental changes and production values which would dominate McCartney’s work in the 1980s. The title track has an instrumental balance between the ears that will make your eyes flutter from side to side. Perhaps that is the tinnitus at play. London Town is a thankfully soft album, and it works best of all when McCartney is touching up his songs with soft brass band fixtures. They are lovely slices of life. Nothing too serious, never all that deep, but thoroughly nice moments. Instrumental strength is what London Town often displays. A few neat breaks throughout the album, where McCartney slips into the background and lets the guitar solos take hold. Wings does brilliantly to keep the slice of life style alive. Cafe on the Left Bank plants us in that bistro with the band, listening in on those loud conversations, eavesdropping on strangers.  

Crucial to the success is how real the tone of London Town is. These are moments which can and still do occur. Groovy pieces like Cuff Link are worth clinging to as the lighter tone of McCartney’s sound comes to light. Children Children is an obnoxious track, an all too light nursery rhyme-like experience which tanks the worldbuilding before it. What London Town lacks is a consistent tone. It lingers on soft rock tones but begins slipping into rockabilly on I’ve Had Enough. Likeable work, but dragging away from what London Town started as, and what it would turn into with the best song of the album, Morse Moose and the Grey Goose. Getting there means getting through Famous Groupies. Wings are all about having fun, but they managed to do that time and again by orchestrating some exceptional instrumentals, some musings on the world around them, which filled London Town with promise.  

That vanishes in the mid-section of the album. Stick with it, though. London Town is still a worthy listen and far superior to the likes of Red Rose Speedway and Wings at the Speed of Sound. Linda McCartney’s pregnancy certainly affected the tone of the album. Songs of childbirth, of protecting the new generation, are littered through London Town with little care for the original message of the album. What remains of that core, of people watching and being aware of time slipping by, is tremendous. It makes London Town worth revisiting. Don’t Let It Bring You Down has that staggering, stony-faced McCartney style, which had rarely been heard since Ram. He was no longer knocking Lennon by the time London Town came out, but there was still a prickly part of the Let It Be songwriter, which this penultimate Wings album taps into nicely.