How can one be so critical of this work?  There are some great melodies,  great instrumental work, and mostly decent songwriting.  Paul even gets  bluesy ("3 Legs", "Smile Away") and sings with gusto  (think "Helter Skelter" or "I'm Down" for a Beatles  reference).  Sure, some of the lyrics tend to drift into the type of  cloying inanities that Paul would later be (rightly) accused of butchering  his solo work, but "Ram" has too many great moments to be  dismissed as shallow or irrelevant.