Gift of Screws Reviews

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by Nico

Ew. He looks orange in that pic.

Well then, at least his skin matches his hair.

Michele

[Nico]

Originally Posted by michelej1

Well then, at least his skin matches his hair.

Michele

All I need to do is photoshop some green hair and I'll have an Oompa Loompa. One of the older ones.

[trackaghost]

Oh looky another rave review!


http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...cle1677301.ece


LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM – Gift Of Screws

****

“I’M still clinging to my sense that there is still much to be said,” says ex-Fleetwood Mac guitarist Buckingham of this, his fifth venture as a fully fledged solo artist.

The album starts quietly with Great Day, which showcases his unusual method of finger-picking guitar giving what is essentially a rock album undeniably folky undertones.


By the fourth track, a more ragged, rock sound is introduced, culminating in a full-on screeching bridge section. Contributing artists Mick Fleetwood and John McVie add some rhythm sections but Buckingham’s ability to waver between varying tempos and genres makes it enjoyable.

[Peestie]

If only it wasn't from The Sun

I kid, any good review is welcome. To be honest, I wouldn't have expected the Sun to be reviewing it.

[TrueFaith77]

Originally Posted by Peestie

If only it wasn't from The Sun

I kid, any good review is welcome. To be honest, I wouldn't have expected the Sun to be reviewing it.

What a weird time in music. Those reviews did make me curious to hear the Metallica album -- now, THAT'S a rave review! But again, what does this guy know? He says that the new Ne-Yo album is all bout his love of women. . . lol

[trackaghost]

Originally Posted by Peestie

If only it wasn't from The Sun

I kid, any good review is welcome. To be honest, I wouldn't have expected the Sun to be reviewing it.

I know But have you ever seen The Sun's weekly music section? It's surprisingly great. I mean this week they have interviews with Joan Baez and Nelly, and in the past they've interviewed everyone from Neko Case and Wilco to Bright Eyes and The Gutter Twins - not artists you'd expect to see in The Sun. I mean they did a big page feature on Dennis Wilson when his album got reissued! It's weird but cool. I learned about artists like Elvis Perkins in The Sun believe it or not, whoever edits their music section has great taste.

[Peestie]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008...dseybuckingham

At the height of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours supernova, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham suddenly started listening to Talking Heads and the Clash. Gift of Screws' harder moments suggest these influences remain, though Buckingham has returned to the ethereal pop-rock songwriting that spawned the band's classic hits. With the trusty Mick Fleetwood-John McVie rhythm section giving lots of sonic wallop, this is more than just a Mac album without the female vocalists: Buckingham seems to be rediscovering some sort of idealism. Time Precious Time addresses life's urgency with virtuoso brilliance. Did You Miss Me, with its uplifting hook and lyrics about dreaming and loss, is the best pop song he has written since Go Your Own Way.

4/5 Stars

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20225097,00.html

As a member of Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham is a rock potentate. As a solo artist, he's an avant-garde aesthete, breaking down beguiling melodies into sonic mushroom clouds. Gift of Screws finds him creating an insular world of ghostly vocals and nervous guitars. On ''Time Precious Time,'' a frenetically picked acoustic guitar ticks off the moments before an emotional reckoning, while the jittery title track throws a cherry bomb at Bush's war machine. Buckingham remains the master of type A chamber pop. A-

Grade A-

What does he mean "throws a cherry bomb at Bush's war machine"? I guess he doesn't know it was written before GW Bush was in power.

[Peestie]

Originally Posted by trackaghost

I know But have you ever seen The Sun's weekly music section? It's surprisingly great. I mean this week they have interviews with Joan Baez and Nelly, and in the past they've interviewed everyone from Neko Case and Wilco to Bright Eyes and The Gutter Twins - not artists you'd expect to see in The Sun. I mean they did a big page feature on Dennis Wilson when his album got reissued! It's weird but cool. I learned about artists like Elvis Perkins in The Sun believe it or not, whoever edits their music section has great taste.

To be honest the few times I've read any of The Sun I've never made it to any music related stuff. I thought if it was anything like the rest of it it wouldn't be worth reading

[Peestie]

And one more...

http://www.bullz-eye.com/cdreviews/g..._of_screws.htm

Wait, what’s this – a new Lindsey Buckingham record, just two years after his last one? Is Fleetwood Mac’s on-and-off guitarist finally learning how to make an album without disappearing completely up his own ass or what?

Well, yes, mostly. Although Gift of Screws takes its title from the album Buckingham spent most of the ‘90s working on – and subsequently parted out for Fleetwood Mac’s last album, 2003’s Say You Will, as well as his last solo effort, 2006’s Under the Skin – it consists mostly of new songs and new recordings, and provides a more-or-less full-band complement to Skin’s heavily acoustic song structures. It sounds, in other words, pretty much like a Mac record minus Stevie Nicks’ bleating. This is not a bad thing.

Aside from Skin’s minor detour, Buckingham’s sonic template hasn’t changed much in the last couple of decades, so if you’re familiar with his work, you know what to expect here – namely acres of fingerpicked guitars, towering stacks of vocals, and lyrics that occasionally border on the darkly paranoid, with wiry needlepoint solos draped over the whole thing. It’s a sound that inspires slavish fandom as often as it provokes confusion and/or disgust; for a guy who’s been essentially absent from the Top 40 for the last 20 years, Buckingham remains a surprisingly polarizing figure.

You probably already know which side of the fence you’re on, and have no intention of changing positions. If you’re a Buckingham fan, though, consider Screws another pleasingly Byzantine, solidly entertaining addition to the catalog, with all of Lindsey’s quirks and charms on full display. The album is packed to the gills with guitars – possibly only the vocal overdubs outnumber them – and although Mick Fleetwood and John McVie appear on some songs, Buckingham produced most of the record, so the bottom end is, politely speaking, an afterthought – he’s never met a bass player he couldn’t make disappear in the mix.

Lindsey Buckingham

Lyrically, it’s darker than Under the Skin – where that album found Buckingham in an uncharacteristically warm and domestic mood, Screws is as conflicted as its title. Here, Buckingham seems to be preoccupied with seclusion and distance – the lyrics are rife with references to being underwater, or underground – but the album’s other recurring theme is making your way back, either to someone (as on the single, “Did You Miss Me”) or from a catastrophe (“Treason”). The melodies reflect this dichotomy, balancing between sweet and expansive to dense and angular – or sometimes, as on the title track, swerving between extremes in a single song.

In the context of Buckingham’s frustratingly meager solo work, Gift of Screws falls a notch below 1992’s brilliant Out of the Cradle, and depending on your favorite side of his work, it may not be as satisfying as Under the Skin. Still, it’s apparent that at an age when many of his peers have run out of things to say, Buckingham’s artistic pace shows no signs of slowing – just the opposite, actually. That’s some Gift.

4/5 Stars

[trackaghost]

Originally Posted by Peestie

To be honest the few times I've read any of The Sun I've never made it to any music related stuff. I thought if it was anything like the rest of it it wouldn't be worth reading

Well, the rest of it is a load of rubbish, you're right I only discovered the music section by accident. I knew they'd review the new Lindsey. They gave UTS a good review too.

Originally Posted by Peestie

...this is more than just a Mac album without the female vocalists: Buckingham seems to be rediscovering some sort of idealism.

I like this line and I totally agree!

[Peestie]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/release/p4n8/

by Chris Jones
12 September 2008

Lindsey Buckingham, chiselled, unsmiling guitarist with Fleetwood Mac, first began recording Gift Of Screws between 1995 and 2001. In the intervening period nearly half the songs recorded were hijacked for the reunion album by the band, Say You Will, as well as various other projects including his own acoustic album, Under The Skin (2006). Luckily Mr B is a very talented man, and despite what may have seemed the cream of the crop being diverted for the greater good, the remaining ten songs are pure gold dust. This album is a gift indeed.

The title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem. The bulk of the material is self-played and self-produced. (with two songs co-written with wife Kristen and one with brother Will). Oh, and on another three songs some blokes called McVie and Fleetwood turn up to provide the rhythm tracks. It's one of these (The Right Place To Fade) that Buckingham approaches the classic sound of the Mac, but elsewhere he's his own man and the results are revelatory.

Most know the stories of Buckingham's love of new wave bands that seemed at odds with the West Coast fare that his band epitomised. And indeed, Gift Of Screws approaches the avant garde in places. The opener, Great Day is quite some statement of intent. Fuelled by furiously plucked nylon strings it's a fever pitch dash through whispered vocals and an incendiary guitar solo. Next up, Time Precious Time is no less startling. Over massed strings he intones like some alt folk hero a third of his age. From here it's a brief (just over 39 minute) ride through pure Californian pop (Did You Miss Me, Love Runs Deeper) gonzo rock (Gift Of Screws), alien folk (Bel Air Rain) and so much more.

His voice is lithe, his fingers insanely nimble and his songwriting chops simply awesome. Really, anyone from the ages of 15 to 65 would find Gift Of Screws exhilarating. Quiet simply, a masterpiece.

Glowing review from the Beeb. They do have the wrong song list on that page though.

[Johnny Stew]

Originally Posted by Peestie

Glowing review from the Beeb. They do have the wrong song list on that page though.

Not to mention "brother Will!"

[michelej1]

b102.7 Sioux Falls Classic Rock

http://www.b1027.com/index.php?optio...4582&Itemid=74

Buckingham Rocks on New Album

Fans who were confused by the unusual mellow vibe of Lindsey Buckingham's last album are going to be pleasantly surprised with his new album, Gift Of Screws, which features numerous layers of hard driving electric guitar.

Buckingham was asked if he'd ever been jealous of his late '70s colleagues Peter Frampton and Neal Schon, who came to symbolize the guitar heroes of the era, while his own groundbreaking work was buried under the drama of the Fleetwood Mac myth: "To some degree, the way the average person judges guitar is sort of guitar for its own sake. And I guess, I've always tried to make guitar in service of the song, and maybe that makes it a little less obvious to the average listener. Part of what I judge success as being, in terms of good record making is when the guitar work -- or any instrumentation kind of melds to the song and becomes not something that you're aware of, just becomes part and parcel with the whole."

Gift Of Screws comes out on Tuesday (September 16th) and features appearances by Fleetwood Mac bandmates Mick Fleetwood and John McVie.


Lindsey Buckingham performs tonight (September 12th) in Stateline, Nevada at Harrah's Lake Tahoe.

[MacMan]

Lindsey Buckingham - Gift of Screws
September 12th, 2008 | 5:35 pm est | Thom Jurek

Allmusicblog

Two studio albums in three years may not seem to be a breakneck pace for anybody else, but for Lindsey Buckingham it is no less than pure acceleration. Indeed if we include the live album that came out in 2007 between the two, it’s like three outings in as many years — warp speed for an artist like Buckingham who has been known to go more than a decade between his own offerings outside of Fleetwood Mac. On 2006’s Under the Skin, Buckingham issued a soft-spoken songwriter’s disc. It was all acoustic, deeply reflective, poignant, profound, and drenched in beauty. It was also criminally under-noticed. Somewhere he promised he’d release an electric rock record in the future. Gift of Screws (referencing the poetry of Emily Dickinson) may not be all the way there, but more often than not it offers the kind of rocking, heady electric pop he’s known for, as well as some glorious, lyrically sophisticated, acoustic singer/songwriter fare that bears his signature alone. Some of these tracks were written for an aborted session begun in the 1990s. Still others made it onto the Mac’s Say You Will, and still others are brand-spanking new.

The set opens with “Great Day,” a pulsing, urgent, minor-key rocker that blends electric and acoustic guitars, organic and electronic percussion, and some hushed keyboards. It explodes near the end with a scorching, burn-up-the-wire guitar solo he usually only plays live. “Did You Miss Me?,” written with wife Kristen Buckingham and featuring drums by Walfredo Reyes, could have appeared on any of Fleetwood Mac’s blissed-out, bittersweet ’70s recordings. The weave of guitars, layered backing vocals, and drop-dead catchy chorus is pure Buckingham. Mick Fleetwood and John McVie are the rhythm section on the rumbling multi-dimensional blues-winder “Wait for Me,” which also offers more evidence of the guitar slinger emerging form the shadows to take place center stage before giving way to a dense multi-textured chorus that transcends the blues without leaving them for dead. Fleetwood also adds drums to “The Right Place to Fade,” with bassist John Pierce. Acoustic guitars meld enormous power chords and stinging lead fills in a frenetically paced pop song. Along the way, there are hesitant, confessional, acoustically orchestrated songs where the darkness almost swallows the light as in “Bel Air Rain.” The wall of strings fingerpicking style adds to the emotional heft of songs like “Time Precious Time,” especially as the vocal effects give the sound a nearly three-dimensional quality. The title track is a balls-out rocker that places ’60s rave-up garage rock up against ’70s glam in a storm of guitars and clattering drums. The closer, “Treason,” is a dignified near-anthemic pop song with a gospel chorus that is unlike any song Buckingham’s written before and sends the set out in a very elegant, and deeply moving way.

What it all means is simple: that Buckingham is not only still relevant, but he’s also a pioneer in terms of craft, execution, and production, and has plenty to teach the current generation about making excellent records and never resting on your laurels. Gift of Screws is a standout even in his catalog.

[Gazza]

while the jittery title track throws a cherry bomb at Bush's war machine.

Eh? Why? It's an Emily Dickinson poem. Maybe a few too many people in the media are conditioned to think of "Bush's War machine" when they hear the word "oil"?