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Show Review: Lindsey Buckingham, JS Ondara at Palace Of Fine Arts, 10/9/18
by DAKIN HARDWICK on OCTOBER 25, 2018
Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham tours semi-frequently. Every few years, you generally can expect him to hit the road, playing a nice assortment of his eccentric solo work and hits from the Fleetwood Mac catalog. In most instances, this would be a pretty inconsequential tour. However, this being 2018, that means there’s gotta be something incredibly weird and divisive. In this case, the abrupt firing / quitting / temporary leave of Lindsey Buckingham from Fleetwood Mac, followed by both Buckingham solo and a Buckingham-less Mac hitting the road AT THE SAME TIME, often times playing the same market only a few weeks apart.
So, yeah, this makes the current solo tour much more interesting. Is he going to do a full set of Fleetwood Mac hits, complete with his signature guitar work? Is he going to disregard all of their nonsense, and just play his solo work? Are we going to get a long, heated monologue about how awful it is working with Mick Fleetwood?
Before we find out those specifics, we were treated to an impressive opening set by JS Ondara. Ondara is a young songwriter from Kenya, by way of Minneapolis. He performed sparse, dark ballads alone, accompanied by only an acoustic guitar. His high-pitched voice is haunting and incredibly emotive. The most direct comparison I could come up with would be Anohni, during their work as Antony and The Johnsons, with just a hint of delta blues sprinkled on top. This set was chilling, and the tension from his songs was only broken by his occasional banter, poking fun at his own sincerity. This guy is good. We haven’t heard the last of JS Ondara.
After a short change over, Buckingham came out backed by a four piece band: a keyboardist, a bassist, a drummer, and a guy hiding in the back that seemed to have a laptop, a sampler, and a giant monitor. They launched into “Don’t Look Down” off of Buckingham’s 1992 record, Out Of The Cradle. This was the record that the bulk of the setlist was made up of. Yet, surprisingly, those songs got the most tepid response from the crowd.
The songs people were most excited about hearing were songs that really spotlight what Buckingham does best- deep, intense lyrics about anxiety and emotional instability, accompanied by some of the most ridiculous finger-picked guitar solos. Tracks like “Go Insane” and “Trouble” spotlighted these sides to him nicely. And the audience ate it all up, with folks being defiant of security to get up and dance.
About halfway through the set, the band left Buckingham alone with just an acoustic guitar and his voice, and, somehow, this cranked everything up a level. This short, 3-song acoustic set really showed off just how great a guitarist he is. With his own bare hands (I never once saw a guitar pick in his hands), he managed to sound like four guitarists at once. During this set he played “Shut Us Down” off the criminally underrated 2006 release Under The Skin, followed by his first two concessions to the Fleetwood Mac catalog- a stunning rendition of “Never Going Back Again” and a fiery, massive performance of “Big Love.” Never has a solo acoustic performance been so electric.
Coming back from the acoustic set, the band was in full crowd-pleaser mode. This meant we got to “Holiday Road,” commonly thought of as the theme to National Lampoon’s Vacation, complete the keyboardist and the “other guy” in the back jamming, but only using dog bark samples. It was so wonderfully weird that Buckingham tried to join in on the barking, but could only laugh instead. The energy from the stage was so silly at this point that, when they tried to play “Tusk,” they just couldn’t get it together right away. They had to stop about 40 seconds into the intro, and just laugh it all out again, this time making jokes about the horn section that wasn’t there, before they could get it together again. After they let it out, it turned into a particularly angry reading of “Tusk.” That took us into a spacey, psyched out version of “I’m Not Afraid,” one of Buckingham’s best anxiety songs. Closing with the crowd pleaser and one of the greatest break up songs in history, “Go Your Own Way,” with the entire crowd up and dancing and taking pictures, with security finally giving up and letting the audience, ahem, go their own way.
So, yeah, Buckingham killed it. This was an amazing, passionate performance. It’s gonna be tough for Fleetwood Mac to match this intensity and intimacy when they come around in December.