Memory Almost Full (Deluxe Limited Edition)

iTunes Review

Like his previous best (Flowers In the Dirt, Tug of War, Band On the Run and even the shaggy glories of Ram) McCartney succeeds here by rising to a confluence of challenges that seem variously personal, artistic and/or professional. Writing from the perspective of an age (64) where Sgt. Pepper once famously found him wondering if anyone would still need — or feed — him, there’s an understandable sense of the elegiac at work in songs like “That Was Me,” “Ever Present Past” and “Vintage Clothes.” Crucially, MaCartney’s not taken his melodic knack for granted here, retrenching it in the restless sense of genre dabbling that’s always been the creative thread connecting his best work — inside or outside the Fabs. “Feet In the Clouds,” “House of Wax,” “The End of the End,” and “Nod Your Head” find him underscoring that notion with a most diverse and rewarding final quarter — a sensibility that segues gracefully into the trio of disparate performances contained on the album’s deluxe edition (“222” even finds Mac going convincingly post-modern).