Lindsey Buckingham
Seeds We Sow
(Mind Kit)
★★★★ 1/2 Stars (out of 5)
It's a good year for the two pillars of Fleetwood Mac's best-known records.
Stevie Nicks, forever the group's most identifiable face in her space-cadet witch regalia, surprised skeptics in May with the unexpectedly solid In Your Dreams. Lindsey Buckingham, the real visionary behind the lush, sparkling Mac sound that once sold records into the platinum stratosphere, does not surprise us at all: with Seeds We Sow, he delivers yet another terrific collection of songs.
Buckingham's solo career has been a matter of one reliable gem after another, so there's always a danger of simply taking his modest little masterworks for granted. The multi-instrumentalist and gifted songwriter never returns to form because the standard has yet to slip.
Like his last two releases, Under the Skin (2006) and Gift of Screws (2008), the new disc - his sixth studio recording and first self-released effort - is defined by Buckingham's hyperactive acoustic fingerpicking and ultra-melodic hooks. The wonderfully familiar pattern is quickly established by the title track, which opens the album, and In Our Own Time, which follows it.
As usual, one of Buckingham's most intriguing quirks is that it's sometimes hard to lock into the groove of his songs: a chorus will come around and you're looking for the natural place to move your head with the rhythm. In Our Own Time and That's the Way That Love Goes are perfect examples. On the latter, the guitarist wails contentedly with two bare-bones electric solos.
Playing virtually all the instruments and doing his own producing and mixing, Buckingham manages to make an insular work sound far-reaching and timeless. Rockers like Illumination and One Take alternate with dreamier tracks like Gone Too Far, which is the most obvious Mac sound-alike on the disc, and When She Comes Down, which evokes the Irish folksong Wild Mountain Thyme as well as Brian Wilson's sunnier choral beds.
Once again, Buckingham raids the deep tracks in the Rolling Stones' mid-`60s catalogue. Having covered I Am Waiting on Under the Skin, he closes the new album with a haunting version of She Smiled Sweetly, surely one of the most tuneful beauties in the Mick Jagger and Keith Richards oeuvre.
If the recurring themes of betrayal and distance add a blue note to the proceedings, the music on this disc overflows with joy. Never take it for granted.
- Bernard Perusse
Montreal Gazette
http://www.canada.com/Reviews+Montre...762/story.html