Buckingham's new disc fails to get "Under the Skin" (Review)

[MacMan]

This guy is an idiot to begin with.... Catch the section where he talks about I am Waiting and To Try For The Sun... He talks about them like Lindsey wrote the lyrics...


Buckingham's new disc fails to get "Under the Skin"
by Bill Zaferos

http://onmilwaukee.com/music/articles/lindsey.html?9914

It’s been 14 years since Lindsey Buckingham released his last album, “Out of the Cradle.”

Perhaps if he had spent another year working on his new one, the aptly named “Under the Skin,” he might have come up with a more coherent, listenable work.

It’s not that it’s awful, it’s just that there’s no there there. The disc lacks cohesiveness and is ultimately just plain boring. There’s not even one number that gets under your skin, in a good way at least.

Listening to “Under the Skin” it’s hard to believe Buckingham was behind the distinctive guitar sound of Fleetwood Mac’s great hits, and harder to believe he wrote “Go Your Own Way” or even the catchy “Trouble” from his 1981 “Law and Order” album. Not even something as lovely as “Soul Drifter” from his last album, “Out of the Cradle,” makes an appearance on this one.

“Under the Skin” is just a ponderous piece of fluff with whispering vocals and goofball lyrics that doesn’t hold up well under repeated listens.

For example, catch these lyrics to the first tedious cut, “Not Too Late:” “Reading the paper/saw a review/said I was a visionary/but nobody knew/Now that’s been a problem/feeling unseen/just like I’m living somebody’s dream.” Visionary? Nothing on “Under the Skin” indicates much vision.

And “unseen”? Lindsey Buckingham? Please. He’s not exactly a guy who’s been laboring in obscurity, although “Under the Skin” may at least relegate him further into irrelevance unless he re-unites with his Mac mates again. Fast.

Put the lyrics of “Not Too Late” over an unending arpeggio and you have a formless mishmash that shows off Buckingham’s guitar skills but does little for the listener. And this is the guy who performed the beautiful lead on Fleetwood Mac’s “Gypsy.”

Or take the second track, “I Am Waiting,” where Buckingham double tracks his voice over the words, “I am waiting, oh yeah, oh yeah, I am waiting, oh yeah” followed by “you can’t hold out oh yeah oh yeah” repeated and then followed by “you can’t hold out you can’t hold out oh yeah oh yeah,” also repeated and followed by some metaphor about a winter storm and more repetitions about being fast or slow.

And when he starts singing, well it’s not so much singing as it is breathing, about gypsy girls in derelict buildings making beds out of rain and tears on “To Try for the Sun,” well, it’s hard not to snicker. There’s a little bit of melody in the underlying guitar, but it’s hard to get past the faux poetry in this apparent tale of innocent love.

OK, so maybe “Castaway Dreams” is sweetly tuneful, but lyrics like “holy light visionary sight there’s been a change in plans” just make it seem dopey. (By the way, there’s that visionary word again.)

While no one can read Buckingham’s mind, “Under the Skin” seems an attempt at increasing Buckingham’s reputation as a “serious” musician. Well, no one ever doubted that. But serious doesn’t mean dull, and that’s what “Under the Skin” is. It’s one thing to challenge listeners, to attempt new styles, to stretch beyond the pop sensibility. But it’s another thing altogether to put people to sleep. The only challenge with “Under the Skin” is playing it past the fifth of 11 cuts.

Ultimately, “Under the Skin” is a throwaway; something that only the most devoted fans will appreciate. It may break Hootie and the Blowfish’s record for most copies in resale CD bins, but that’s assuming anyone had the misfortune of buying it in the first place.

If you'd like to comment on this article (like four others have already... here's the link: http://www.onmilwaukee.com/talkback/...s/lindsey.html)

[markolas]

Some people (like this guy, obviously) have no taste. What can you say?

[johndoe]

Haha I was actually going to post this. The guys an ass. And I say that not only because hes making fun of one of my musical idols, and because I'm an obessed fan boy, but because the guys takes every single chance to make bad jokes about it. FOR SHAME.

[JazmenFlowers]

chiffonheads know how this story goes all too well. stupid. I guess personal taste is essential for a reviewer. too bad this one has none.

[face of glass]

I'm not sure if a negative review that falls into the usual trap of making cheap jokes at every turn is much worse than the usual positive pseudo-analytical review like this one at Stylus Magazine. But at least they recognize the awesomeness of Holiday Road:

http://stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=4476

Lindsey Buckingham
Under the Skin
Warner Bros.
2006
B+

The world is a sadder place without another “Holiday Road.” Despite a Top Ten hit in 1981 (the ethereal “Trouble”) and 30 years of renown as Fleetwood Mac’s extraordinary guitarist, producer, and arranger, Lindsey Buckingham’s audience can be forgiven for assuming that the frizzy-haired weirdo’s niggardly hoarding of dulcet trinkets is one more idiosyncrasy in a career replete with them. Under the Skin doesn’t have any songs on the level of “Holiday Road”’s determined stupidity, but, still, what a relief to enjoy the company of a fiftysomething musician whose imponderable wealth encourages him to act stupid with a bunch of stringed instruments and a mixing board, instead of buttressing a McCartney-esque complacency.

Buckingham’s fourth solo album brandishes all the familiar indulgences: the auteur’s multitracked harmonies and fingerpicked nylon guitar glissandos as hooks; lyrics no more than taglines; and an excellent taste in covers (here it’s Donovan and a lovely, limpid “I Am Waiting”). Under the Skin uses the spartan take on “Big Love” he recorded for 1997’s The Dance as a blueprint; subverting the original’s dynamic by recasting the raucous as ruminative, Buckingham captured the ardor of middle-age sex without resorting to pelvic thrusts and lumpen lyrical innuendos. Or inappropriate overdubs—as “Show You How” shows us. Thanks to low strummed notes and the merest suggestion of percussion, Buckingham delineates the intensity with which aging bodies slide into each other upon discovering that it’s only nice because it’s naughty. “You can wake up from a dream and see your better half,” he whispers with modest eloquence. “It Was You” conveys the same kind of erotic awakening, thanks to a chorus of overdubbed Lindseys belching the uncaged yawp of his id.

There isn’t another rock and roller of Buckingham’s generation with such an inflated reputation for plush arrangements when, really, he’s the only one who keeps the Mellotrons and brass bands on the top shelf of his closet. Tusk and Tango in the Night—the Fleetwood Mac albums which bear his fingerprints most prominently—are so memorable because the songs rarely dissolved into the wobbly reverbed spareness of the former and programmed textures of the latter. Asceticism like Buckingham’s can chaff and balk: it’s a dialectic of such fragility that I’m not surprised Mick Fleetwood and John McVie tiptoe into a room before asking him to rejoin the Mac. It’s a rather mundane kind of dialectic that lends “Not Too Late” its tension. How many songs combine subjects as vile as the artist’s caviling at critics’ expectations and the wonderfulness of bearing children? Avoiding psychoanalytic jargon, Buckingham undercuts his own awareness of being underrated by acknowledging that his children regard their father’s hibernal retreats into the studio as, well, fishy: “My children look away / They don’t know what to say.”

Admissions like this make me wish Buckingham was allowed to use them on Fleetwood Mac albums. As beguiling as much of Under the Skin is, these songs would benefit from the Mac’s supple, still-underrated rhythm section, not to mention the harmonies of fellow ditz Stevie Nicks and much-missed Christine McVie—as the album’s only group track “Down On Rodeo” reminds us. Studio nuts that keep their principles through marriage and childbirth are a commodity for which a band should pay any price to acquire, especially if VH1 Classic and ILM are embalming them.

[Gazza]

The first reviewer seemed completely unaware that I Am Waiting was a Rolling Stones song. What more to expect from such a vitriolic prat I guess. I don't mind negative reviews, but please, show a little respect to the time and effort someone has put into their work. These overbearingly smug critics, and the God awful amatuer critics you are confronted by on the net (who seem to be in competition with the real ones on how smug you can be), really do seem to have no real appreciation of anything. Even when they're writing a good review, they do so in a half hearted way. Horrid, cynical, and usually miserable people.

[lilith2]

Originally Posted by face of glass

I'm not sure if a negative review that falls into the usual trap of making cheap jokes at every turn is much worse than the usual positive pseudo-analytical review like this one at Stylus Magazine. But at least they recognize the awesomeness of Holiday Road:

http://stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=4476

I would like to see 2 things stop with the positive and negative reviews:
1. Stop analysing LB the person.
2. Stop the Mac references.
These topics, especially in short reviews, are too easy to speculate on and make for easy distraction from the new music on UTS that they are supposedly reviewing. (IMO)

[xhector]

Excellent. Some short minded people bashes the work, just like in all Lindsey's best material. That's a good sign.
Keep them coming!

[shackin'up]

Originally Posted by xhector

Excellent. Some short minded people bashes the work, just like in all Lindsey's best material. That's a good sign.
Keep them coming!

Yeah, xhector, yer right. I expected this. It's always been the same. Any LB-album is easy to bash. Only when you let it breathe it reveals it's beauty. To be honest, I'm quite shocked about the amount of positive reviews. Normally reviewers judge in an instant. Like this one.

[SortaSavageLike]

Originally Posted by face of glass

I'm not sure if a negative review that falls into the usual trap of making cheap jokes at every turn is much worse than the usual positive pseudo-analytical review like this one at Stylus Magazine. But at least they recognize the awesomeness of Holiday Road:

http://stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=4476

Pretentious twats!

This is how you write:

There are three Stevies. The fey, diaphanous Stevie, the mystical Stevie, and the "I’m gonna bash you across the face with my Platform Boots of Death if you don’t knock it off" Stevie. Bella Donna is all three Stevies at once. As she sings in the title track, it was time to "come in out of the darkness." Oh yeah, and to fling lots of venom at a certain curly-haired guitarist.

[Stanley]

Reviewers are people with opinions who figured out how to foist them on the unsuspecting masses, or as in the case of the Milwaukee web site, the unsuspecting three readers that make up its audience. What can you do? The reviewer didn't seem to bother to read the liner notes or to even notice that I Am Waiting isn't the second song on the CD. Did he skip to it from the first track? Who cares what he thinks anyway?

[estranged4life]

I like reading reviews, be it good or bad.

The bad reviews make me wonder what the reviewer is hearing that I am obviously not.

[nichora]

Originally Posted by estranged4life

I like reading reviews, be it good or bad.

The bad reviews make me wonder what the reviewer is hearing that I am obviously not.

You mean:
makes me wonder what the review is NOT hearing that I obviously am.

[dontlookdown]

I don't find anything pretentious about the Milwaukee reviewer. Instead, I find his writing to be on the level of most community college newspapers.
Clearly, he's got no foundation in music or rock and roll. And he didn't bother to read the liner notes and credits. What's more pathetic - the fact that he wasn't aware of the Rolling Stones and Donovan covers or the fact that he never did his homework to see who wrote all the tracks?
Taste in music is subjective but there's no excuse for sloppy journalism. Journalism that my grade school relatives could easily live up to and surpass with their own writing.

All that aside, I know Lindsey will eat this up and he'll laugh. It's certainly the first case of life imitating art since Under The Skin was released. Does he not get the point of this record? Is he not aware of Lindsey's whole take on the music business, critics, and how is career fits in to all that?
Oh well. I'll continue to enjoy the reviews from every single major newspaper in every major market of the United States. All of them gave Under The Skin glowing reviews. Pity the poor people in Milwaukee who have to be subjected to such ****ty writing.

Do I sound defensive?

[DrummerDeanna]

Originally Posted by lilith2

I
2. Stop the Mac references.

I dont' think that's ever going to happen.

I love the album - but I can completely see where some people would not..a lot of it is not melodic and "easy to sing to" and that trips a lot of people out.