Every Wings Album Ranked From Worst To Best
4. Wildlife
Wildlife is a rough, scrappy album of sloppy jams and gentle love songs with twee vocals. It’s also an underrated gem that probably sounds better to modern ears than it did at the time.
It was recorded and released in 1971, arriving in the wake of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and John Lennon’s imagine. Comparisons were inevitably drawn.
Harrison’s album featured legendary producer Phil Spector’s famous 'Wall of Sound' production style and Lennon’s, while less overblown, also had Spector at the helm. By contrast Wildlife felt half-baked and unfinished.
Hindsight plus years of twee pop and lo-fi indie bands allows us to reframe the album’s rough edges and sappy vocals as aesthetic choices rather than creative misfires.
The worst thing here is Bip Bop which sounds like an outtake from T-Rex’s early acoustic incarnation and one that they would’ve been right to drop.
Everything else is at least charming and for the most part delightful.