ALBUM REVIEW
Pop: Fleetwood Mac: Tango In The Night Deluxe

★★★★☆
Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 masterpiece, Rumours, is remembered as the ultimate cocaine album, but the warring superstar rockers saved the real excesses for ten years later. Tango in the Night is the last word in sophisticated, expensively produced soft rock, with such FM radio classics as Christine McVie’s Everywhere and Lindsey Buckingham’s Big Love sounding as if they were made for driving your Ferrari down Sunset Strip to.

The songs were, however, born of total chaos. The bassist John McVie was drinking himself into a stupor; Stevie Nicks, busy swapping cocaine for the damaging tranquilliser Klonopin, while also building up her now successful solo career, rarely turned up at the studio. The whole thing came to an end when guitarist Buckingham announced he was leaving the band, reportedly leading to an ugly physical confrontation between him and his former girlfriend Nicks.

All these years later the album seems less like a soundtrack to a designer lifestyle and more a portrait of collapse. Nicks’s little-girl-gone-to-seed croak on the ballad When I See You Again is heartbreaking, and the evergreen synthesizer pop of McVie’s Little Lies smoothes over words about refusing to face up to reality, something the band members appear to have been quite good at.

On this three-disc set not all of the alternative versions are strictly necessary, and Buckingham’s comedy voices on Family Man are as dated as a piano necktie, but for the most part the quintessential Eighties album has ended up being far more profound and enduring than anyone could have predicted. (Warner Bros)



http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/ti...luxe-cdplxz78k

Is he back on the cocaines? :lol:

It must be that coconut oil (with all that it entails).

Album Reviews: Fleetwood Mac - Tango in the Night (Deluxe Edition) and More

According to conventional wisdom, Fleetwood Mac’s peak occurred between 1975 and 1977, when the band—reinvigorated by the addition of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks—issued an eponymous album and Rumours. Many critics viewed the 1979 follow-up to the latter LP, Tusk, as a bit of a disappointment, and after that it was all supposedly downhill—way downhill.
I’m not buying this party line, as I’ve noted in my reviews of deluxe reissues of Tusk and 1982’s Mirage. I think those albums were largely terrific, and I can say the same about 1987’s Tango in the Night. I’m probably not alone in rejecting the critical consensus about Tango, moreover, since the CD has sold more than 15 million copies and ranks as the second-bestselling album of the group’s career (after Rumours).

The record, which started out as a Buckingham solo project and wound up being his last album with the group, has now joined the Fleetwood Mac reissue series. And, like its predecessors in that series, this repackaging lives up to its “deluxe” billing. Three CDs respectively deliver a 2017 remaster of the original album; 13 B-sides, demos, and early and alternate versions; and more than a dozen 12-inch mixes of five Tango tracks. There’s also a DVD that includes videos for five of the tunes and a high-resolution stereo mix of the LP; and, for those who miss the pre-digital era, a vinyl record that contains the 2017 remaster. If all that’s not enough to keep you busy, you can turn to the enclosed oversized booklet, which features an essay about the album, plus lyrics, photos, and credits.

The rhythmic original LP, which sounds better than ever thanks to the remaster, is loaded with pleasures, not to mention hit singles. Among the highlights: Buckingham’s “Big Love,” which gives Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” a run for its money in the sensuality department; and such ear candy as “When I See You Again” and “Seven Wonders,” both with passionate Stevie Nicks vocals; and the sublime “Everywhere,” “Little Lies,” and “Mystified,” all sung by Christine McVie. Songs like these leave no doubt that Fleetwood Mac were masters of melody and production and that any one of its three vocalists would have been enough to make another band famous. A few tracks, such as “Family Man,” deliver more studio wizardry than emotion but the bulk of this material is the real deal.

Disc two is stronger than you might expect. “Down Endless Street” is as catchy as anything on the original album and, while you can see why Tango’s versions improved on some of the outtakes and demos here, they’re virtually all interesting and well-executed.

It’s difficult to be as enthusiastic about disc three, which dilutes everything that’s special about Fleetwood Mac by introducing disco beats and embellishments. If you're nostalgic for Studio 54, this is the record for you. If not, you’ll likely prefer the songs on the original album.

I have mixed feelings about the DVD. It’s good to see the videos—which feature “Big Love,” “Seven Wonders,” “Little Lies,” “Family Man,” and “Everywhere”—but it would have been better to have some concert material from the period; what we have here instead are pretty visuals accompanied by a lip-synching band. As for the high-resolution version of the album on the DVD, it sounds even better than the CD; but it would have sounded better still if it were a 5.1 surround mix.

Happily, the album is being made available in several formats. Casual fans can opt for a single CD with the remastered album, though I’d recommend that listeners seriously consider a two-CD package that incorporates the disc of outtakes and other rarities. The everything-but-the-kitchen-sink edition described above is a somewhat more debatable (and, of course, pricier) purchase, but if you’re a big fan of the group, you might well be glad to have it.



http://www.themortonreport.com/enter...tion-and-more/

The album is at #15 on the UK albums chart Monday update. That is MUCH better than I thought. It's not selling well through downloads so clearly it's being stocked at many retailers unlike the other reissues. I hope it stays in the Top 20 by the time the charts are published on Friday!

I would like a hard copy. I think I'll go get one.

A great package of middling Fleetwood Mac music

Fleetwood Mac, "Tango in the Night: Deluxe Edition" (Rhino/Warner Three discs, DVD and LP)

When they say "deluxe edition," they're not kidding.

For sheer luxurious presentation it would be difficult to exceed this package being brought out in honor of the 30th anniversary of Fleetwood Mac's second-best seller, the record that gave us "Big Love" and "Little Lies." From the original cover painting in tribute to the great French proto-surrealist Henri Rousseau to the live performance DVD, LP and disc of outtakes included on this new remastered edition of the record, you would think it was as treasurable as a Led Zeppelin or Beatles artifact.

But it's not. And if anything can persuade you of the dangers of pop music nostalgia decades after the fact, this package will go a long way toward it. It does not speak well of the '80's, that's for sure. There will always be those who will swear fealty to Lindsey Buckingham's tenure with the band but so much of this, in the 21st century, sounds bland, colorless, over-produced and under-performed. (Stevie Nicks does not sound especially good.)

That being said, there is ample testimony from those who will tell you that as nostalgia acts go, they've been dynamite in live performance. This record has sold 15 million copies to date and is doubtless a favorite of many. To have an entire disc of extended remixes of "Big Love," "Seven Wonders," "Little Lies," "Everywhere" and "Family Man" will be for them, manna from heaven.

For those of us who never caught them live and, therefore for whom the band was never much more than a Billboard chart pleasantry and an intriguing source of salacious tales of rock romance, this is as much a source of puzzlement as anything else. What if the time has finally come to tell the band, decisively, to stop thinking about tomorrow? It would be a miracle if their yesterday was substantial enough to propel them there. A glorious package though.

2 1/2 stars (out of four)



http://buffalonews.com/2017/04/06/li...n-bela-bartok/

It ended the week at UK #23.
Rumours is #28.
Very Best of #42.

I honestly don't remember a week when Fleetwood Mac weren't within the top 100 of the albums chart. It is really impressive.

Tango in the Night sold 4,249 copies to reach #23.

The album has re-entered the Billboard 200 for the first time since 1988 at #144 on sales of 4,213 copies.

To compare, both Mirage editions sold 2,269 and 2,128 copies each to total 4,397 copies.

Stevie's Bella Donna remains the best-selling single reissue of them all but only just on sales of 4,302 copies.

Long-term fans of Fleetwood Mac will adore this special reissue

The latest in series of excellent remasters from the legendary transatlantic musical soap opera, this mega-selling 1987 classic gets a long-overdue reissue to mark its 30th birthday, complete with a bonus disc of B-sides and studio outtakes that long-term fans will adore.

Considered a spent force by the mid-80s, this unexpected triumph showed Mac were very much alive and kicking. Still filling the airwaves three decades on, Lindsey Buckingham’s arresting ‘Big Love’, the Nicks-penned ‘Seven Wonders’ and Christine McVie’s show-stealing double-whammy of ‘Everywhere’ and ‘Little Lies’ are the standouts on the band’s strongest, most consistent set since 1977’s career-defining ‘Rumours’.



http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/152..._in_the_Night/