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Rating: Announced for the autumn of 2015, the reissues for the Archive series of "Tug of War" and "Pipes of Peace", 1982 and '83 respectively, are hitting the stores. The first deserves a much more in-depth analysis, and for this review, I will focus only on the less interesting piece of the duo. It must be noted that the Archive series, progressing with considerable slowness, is beginning to annoy McCartney fans who particularly didn't appreciate the incomplete discography of the Wings in favor of the '80s releases, the next being "Flowers in the Dirt" at the beginning of 2016.
Setting aside these murmurs, as they say in Genoese, the quality of the releases, although lacking truly unreleased material, is always remarkable, even if the box set editions continue to have a price that is too high for the European market compared to others, primarily the States. That said, "Pipes of Peace" is reviewed here in the two-disc edition, the second consisting of demos and B-sides plus a track from a soundtrack, "Twice in a Lifetime". In McCartney's discography, this LP represents the first truly false step, in terms of pure quality, of his career. As has often been noted, it is a selection of leftover material from the "Tug of War" sessions invigorated by a few new tracks, above all the magnificent title track. It is the album of duets with Michael Jackson on "Say Say Say" and "The Man" and the Wings tracks dating back to the 1980 sessions, "Keep Under Cover," "Sweetest Little Show" and "Average Person" re-recorded with Eric Stewart, Steve Gadd, Stanley Clarke, and numerous other guests led behind the mixer by maestro George Martin at his Air Studios in Montserrat, in the Caribbean. The cleaning operation is less evident than in other releases, as the sound was already well calibrated by the techniques used by Martin originally; details previously less noticeable emerge in some guitar parts and the backing vocals of Linda, Eric Stewart, and Denny Laine, which in the original were too dense and indistinct. The original album suffered from too much cleaning and created a plasticky effect typical of many albums from the '80s. However, it is a work that I have always considered uninteresting, and when compared to Paul's two decades of activity, it results in a negative judgment. The second disc proves to be much more captivating. It features the original Wings demos from October 1980, even though the notes are too scarce on information, of the pieces mentioned earlier on which stands out a slow and much more beautiful version of "Average Person." Two previously unreleased tracks never surfaced on bootleg, "It's On On," and "Simple As That." The second is the embryo from which Paul will later extract the eponymous track published in 1985, the first is an uninteresting unreleased track with a guide vocal probably from his daughter Mary. A new mix of "Say Say Say" with new vocal parts by Jackson and a long funky instrumental tail is quite interesting as well as the instrumental "Christian Bop,", a bouncy string motif that Paul will reuse for the "Liverpool Oratorio" opera. Closing the B-side is "Ode to Koala Bear," a very simple song dedicated to the Australian marsupial with a good rhythm and catchy melody. The electric guitar deviation, probably by Denny Laine, is very nice.
This Archive release is great for completists and fans of the album. However, it is undoubtedly considered the weakest of the re-releases so far of McCartney's solo discography and that of the Wings. The duo "London Town"/"Back to The Egg" would have been more appreciated by the fans.
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