Quote:
Originally Posted by bombaysaffires
Yes that's what I and many others mean when we say it is a highly produced album. They didn't leave the songs in a raw state meaning that they went in and did some rough takes and then put those out. Make no mistake everything on there is deliberate and polished. They recorded a lot of backing vocals and instrumental tracks and Lindsey played around with how many to layer in (or not). And even on the songs that you THINK are really minimalist and only have a couple things on them it's not the case. It's hard to imagine but it takes a lot of layers to sound like it's only a few. It's like women who you'd swear aren't wearing any makeup at all and just look naturally flawless, when in reality there are layers and layers of foundation and contouring and highlighter and 6 shades of neutral eyeshadow and eyeliner that look like she's wearing no eye make up at all.
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Good way to put it—good analogy. I think we’re all on the same page. The production label includes things like the arrangements or orchestrations, which involve deciding which instruments to incorporate, setting levels, deciding how (or whether) to combine instruments or vocals (double-tracking, triple-tracking, quadruple-tracking), instrumental costuming (creating the illusion of one instrument with another), and so on.
Over and Over may have a lot of thinking behind it and a lot of conscious craftsmanship involved in its recording, but it’s arranged to sound as if you were only hearing a basic combo: drums, bass, electronic piano, organ, acoustic guitar, an electric guitar or two, a lead vocal and some harmonies. It has a natural,
ad hoc feel—kind of a “take it from the top” live feel, which is something that Fleetwood Mac usually does not do. What you usually hear is an entire novel of sound ideas where pieces of instrumentation or vocals are stripped or combined in ways that the listener feels more than hears. Fleetwood Mac is the idea band. They must have thousands of ideas in a year of being in the studio, and I bet they put the majority of those ideas on tape. But months later, they may remove a bunch of them, too (think of the way the kit brushes were removed from
Never Going Back Again).
Sometimes they go wrong for my personal taste. Why isn’t there a chunkier, more prominent piano on
Love in Store? It fairly cries out for it.