Gift of Screws Reviews

[michelej1]

On this album's opener, "Great Day," there's an electric-guitar solo so blowtorch-hot, it seems specifically designed to bitch-slap anyone with the nerve to wonder if Lindsey Buckingham still rocks.

Oh, yeah! I want this album in my home, now.

Michele

[MacMan]

On this album's opener, "Great Day," there's an electric-guitar solo so blowtorch-hot, it seems specifically designed to bitch-slap anyone with the nerve to wonder if Lindsey Buckingham still rocks.

What a great line!!

[Peestie]

http://www.uncut.co.uk/music/fleetwo.../reviews/12132

He was, incredibly, the new wave one in Fleetwood Mac, but Lindsey Buckingham’s much-tromboned love of the Gang Of Four, Prag Vec and the Delta Five (or similar) never really seemed to make it into his music. (Certainly very few people who ever heard Love Like Anthrax ever went on to make a double album like Tusk). But he’s always had more of an adventurous spirit than his fellow band members. And this presumably why Mick Fleetwood and the McVies invited Stevie Nicks and him to join their old blues band, effectively bolting a Mustang body onto an old Bentley.

In fact, Buckingham’s extra-curricular creativity has been something of a problem for him, in that he keeps writing a lot of the best songs in his old band, all the while initially intending them for himself. Thus the first incarnation of Gift Of Screws which he worked on between 1995 and 2001, and which was, in a way, his Smile. A double album, it never came out, as Buckingham was persuaded to stripmine seven of its best songs for Fleetwood Mac, who duly recorded them, had big hits, and went away again. Buckingham released instead the perfectly acceptable Under The Skin in 2006, and no more was heard of Gift Of Screws until, as they used to say on Tomorrow’s World, now, that is.

This Gift Of Screws is no sprawling epic. It’s just under 40 minutes long, for a kick off, and it contains no mad experimentation, no Tusky title track or rewrites of “At Home He’s A Tourist”. Instead there is a fair old bit of Buckingham’s trademark fiddly guitar playing (most notably on a song called “Time Precious Time”, which is almost entirely fiddly guitar bits, like a man trying to remember the intro to “Never Going Back Again” for three minutes). Mick Fleetwood and John McVie turn up, as if apologising for nicking all those songs for Say You Will, but Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks are absent, otherwise it would all be unsolo again and Buckingham would be slapping his chiselled forehead and going, “D’oh!”

But despite all that, the most initially striking thing about Gift Of Screws is that, despite its brevity, it’s actually quite varied. The first track, “Great Day”, is both minimal and beefy, like a skeleton that works out. “Time Precious Time”, despite the aforementioned fiddly, is quite peculiar, stopping the album dead just two tracks in, while the title track is purely mental, being the most aggressive thing anyone involved with Fleetwood Mac has ever recorded. What it’s about is hard to tell, largely because it’s quite hard to get near the lyrics with all the clenched-teeth vocals and tornado-faced guitars. If it was a single, some people might die.

And there are a few proper pop classics on here as well. “Wait For You” is the sort of yearning song that The Cars or Cheap Trick would have killed for, but with an added stadium melancholy that only Buckingham can do. “Love Runs Deeper” is like ELO, only great. Best of all, if you’re listening to this album because you liked Rumours (and it would be a bit weird if you weren’t), The Right Place to Fade is a great Rumours song that never was, even down to the skipping beat and “ra-ta-ta-ta” hook. (You can imagine Fleetwood Mac’s managers begging Buckingham to hand it over the band and crying when he doesn’t).

It’s hard to imagine this record being number one all round the universe – Buckingham’s name alone doesn’t shift warehouses – but, even as a listener raised by the new wave police to weed out and destroy punk traitors, I’m astonished by the inventiveness, excitement, and pure bastard vigour of this album. It’s like Keane never happened. It would seem that Lindsey Buckingham is still the cutting edge king of Bel Air.

DAVID QUANTICK


UNCUT Q+A With Lindsey Buckingham

UNCUT: A version Gift Of Screws was originally intended for release over a decade ago. What happened..?

BUCKINGHAM: There was an intention of putting out a solo album in the late Nineties – and then something intervened, which was Fleetwood Mac, and so that got put on the shelf. And then a certain amount of the material from that grouping made its way onto the new studio album, Say You Will. There are maybe three songs that remain from that group of songs on the present Gift Of Screws that were waiting to find a home.

How do you find it as a solo artist instead of working in a group?

I don’t have a problem exposing myself as a solo artist… You can go back to a post-Rumours environment. Rumours was extremely commercially successful. In the wake of that success, you find yourself having freedom. But you also find yourself poised to follow the expectations of those who want you to repeat that success to a certain formula. So Tusk was a line drawn in the sand for me to subvert that. Because Tusk was estimated to be a failure in certain camps, because it didn't sell 16 million albums, a dictum came down to the band that said we should stick a more conservative formula. That was the time I started making solo albums. So the left side of the palette is reserved much for solo work, and the things that are more palatable to the politics of the group as a whole tend to make their way into a Fleetwood Mac context. it’s nice to have both. And it may be a bit schizoid, but it’s a nice luxury to have that. I think you have to let people see the raw side of what’s going on.

INTERVIEW: MICHAEL BONNER

It gets 4 stars.

[michelej1]

^ I love it!

Instead there is a fair old bit of Buckingham’s trademark fiddly guitar playing (most notably on a song called “Time Precious Time”, which is almost entirely fiddly guitar bits, like a man trying to remember the intro to “Never Going Back Again” for three minutes).

Oh my goodness, this is priceless!

I laughed when he said that people might die if GOS was a single, because I don't really like "rock" music, but I liked GOS. I think the music fits beautifully with the words and love the dichotomy of fury and flowers.

Hey, Fury and Flowers symbolize Fleetwood Mac, in a sense.

So, where was I when Fleetwood Mac took 7 of Lindsey's GOS songs and had "big hits" with them? Honestly, I think I drink sometimes, because I lose time. Lost weekends. Lost years. Michele

[squealy]

You can go back to a post-Rumours environment. Rumours was extremely commercially successful. In the wake of that success, you find yourself having freedom. But you also find yourself poised to follow the expectations of those who want you to repeat that success to a certain formula. So Tusk was a line drawn in the sand for me to subvert that. Because Tusk was estimated to be a failure in certain camps, because it didn't sell 16 million albums, a dictum came down to the band that said we should stick a more conservative formula.

I think Lindsey has said some variation of this in every interview he has done for the past 25 years.

[ajmccarrell]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...yndication=rss

Here's a review!

[vivfox]

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Phase 2 of the post-Fleetwood Mac Lindsey Buckingham is nearly complete. All that remains is a concert tour, which includes a show at Tahoe Saturday, Sept. 12, in support of his new album, “Gift of Screws.”

Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie plan to reunite in January to make a new studio album, then go out on a tour. A fifth member, Christine McVie, does not plan to come back.

Buckingham sounds so content now, however, that it’s baffling that he wants to rejuvenate the band. Fleetwood Mac comebacks thwarted his previous attempts to record on his own over a 14-year period. In that time, Buckingham remarried and had three children, finally setting aside time for himself.

“I chose to put a boundary around a three-year period and say to the band: ‘I want to make two albums and I want to tour behind them. Then, when we’re done, we can talk about what we want to do,’ ” Buckingham said in a conference call with music reporters. “That made the logistical side about it clear and easy to do. The old adage is, ‘Children are deaf to the artist,’ but I have found that to be just the opposite. It feels to me like I’m in the most creative period of my life right now.”

“Gift of Screws,” set for release Sept. 16, is a rock ’n’ roll answer to Buckingham’s acoustic “Under the Skin.”

“I wasn’t necessarily intending to make it so much more rock,” Buckingham said. “I was thinking it might be a step or two up from ‘Under the Skin’ had been, but it seemed to go in a certain direction on its own. That’s one thing you learn: You follow the work and let it lead you.”

The man who wrote “Go Your Own Way,” took that philosophy to heart when in 1979 he produced “Tusk,” Fleetwood Mac’s follow up to “Rumours,” by far the band’s top-selling album. Buckingham’s proclivity for experimentation and creativeness, often during times of Fleetwood Mac’s turmoil and drama, was not always appreciated.
“I realized not everyone was in a band for the same set of reasons,” Buckingham said. “The years after ‘Tusk’ were difficult knowing where to go as a producer and a writer for myself — increasing dysfunction of the band as they were conducting their life personally. It led to me just taking off for my individuality and my sanity. ‘Tusk’ has always been my favorite album. That was the album that defined how I still try to think today. The irony is many members of the band in retrospect look at that as their favorite album as well.”

“Gift of Screws” celebrates Buckingham’s fingerstyle guitar prowess. Buckingham, who was first inspired by music when his brother bought Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel,” is a self-taught guitar and bluegrass banjo player who was influenced by folk from the early ’60s, especially the Kingston Trio.

His singing style and experience as a producer further developed a unique sound.
“I enjoy taking anything and trying to convolute it beyond any sense of reality in one form or another,” he said. “I’ve never been one who’s been afraid to wear the artifice on the sleeve. Let’s have some fun. Let’s use the tools, and let the people know you’re using them.”

Buckingham said his public breakup with Nicks during the production of “Rumours” limited his creativity.

“Having to see her every day and do the right thing for her as a producer and not having the space for any closure, it was like someone picking at a wound all the time,” he said. “A way we dealt with it was to close off whole areas of your emotional landscape. I continued to work but the rest of my life was very narrow.”

“Getting a family … was almost like a big iceberg breaking up and melting. It just gave me a whole other basis for being creative and it gave me a support system to make decisions that I didn’t feel quite as enabled to make in years past.”

The stir Sheryl Crow created earlier this year when she announced that she would be replacing Christine McVie in Fleetwood Mac brought Buckingham and Nicks together for serious and productive discussions about the future of the group. Band members considered bringing Crow into Fleetwood Mac but never made an offer, Buckingham said.

Buckingham said reuniting with Fleetwood Mac is like going home.

“It’s comfortable, like seeing your parents, because you know each other so well,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you don’t have issues that can crop up. The agenda is to avoid things we’ve blown out of proportion in the past and to remind ourselves that we do love each other and are great friends.”

http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/art...rentprofile=-1

[TrueFaith77]

Originally Posted by vivfox

Buckingham said reuniting with Fleetwood Mac is like going home.

“It’s comfortable, like seeing your parents, because you know each other so well,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you don’t have issues that can crop up. The agenda is to avoid things we’ve blown out of proportion in the past and to remind ourselves that we do love each other and are great friends.”

http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/art...rentprofile=-1

I knew there would be a part that made me cry

[michelej1]

Stevie has also likened Lindsey to her parents in the past. She says that she's known him so long that the minute you hear that voice on the phone it makes you cry or something. That there's a comfort there, which I thought was sweet because Lindsey and Stevie don't really talk about the moments when they find comfort in each other. We only hear of the other times.

But basically, the thing is that they have known each other for 40 years and they still have a relationship. It may be a lot of things, but it really isn't a tenuous bond at all. It's going to persevere, fights and all. Michele

[Lori40]

Originally Posted by vivfox

Thursday, September 11, 2008



In that time, Buckingham remarried and had three children, finally setting aside time for himself.


http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/art...rentprofile=-1

Another journalist who thinks Lindsey was married to Stevie?????????

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by TrueFaith77

I knew there would be a part that made me cry

You can see more of the picture in that link you provided.

http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/art...rentprofile=-1

See how big his hands are? We talked about this in the context of his forehead. Seeing his hands too and how out of proportion they are it just establishes that this picture is distorted like a fun house mirror.

He is wearing the artifice on his sleeve, as discussed in the article.

Michele

[michelej1]

London Mirror

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv-entertain...5875-20733045/

Album review: Lindsey Buckingham - Gift Of Screws
4/5 11/09/2008

The major powerhouse and songwriter behind Fleetwood Mac’s golden era, Buckingham’s knack for blending experimentation and killer hooks finds sharp focus on this, his fifth solo album.

With Mac stalwarts Mick Fleetwood and John McVie providing the rhythmic foundation, Buckingham unleashes incendiary guitar licks aplenty, Clash meets Beach Boys-style rocking fun (Underground), and mixes a feel for exotic topicality (Time Precious Time) with seasoned sensitivity and political commitment (Treason).

[Nico]

Originally Posted by michelej1

You can see more of the picture in that link you provided.

http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/art...rentprofile=-1

See how big his hands are? We talked about this in the context of his forehead. Seeing his hands too and how out of proportion they are it just establishes that this picture is distorted like a fun house mirror.

He is wearing the artifice on his sleeve, as discussed in the article.

Michele

Ew. He looks orange in that pic. I liked the other version where he had a normal skin tone. He looks peculiar here- and this coming from someone who originally loved the pic.

[MacMan]

Buckingham's solo work is top priority

The PE.com

By VANESSA FRANKO
The Press-Enterprise

Lindsey Buckingham described his career as "fraught with landmines."

From the personal struggles behind the scenes as the guitarist was making classic albums "Rumours" and "Tusk" with Fleetwood Mac and the related aftermath to trying to take off from the band and working on his solo career, there have been pitfalls along the way.

In recent years, however, the landscape hasn't been as treacherous.

"The subtext of all the work that has gone on in the last three years in a way has been much easier. It's been a period where the personal side of my life has been greatly enriched," Buckingham said in a phone interview, talking about his marriage and children.

He also set aside time to put his solo work ahead of Fleetwood Mac, not allowing those songs he was writing as solo material to be picked up by the band, as they had in the past.

"I chose to put a boundary around a three-year period and say to the band, 'I really want to make two albums, I have a very specific goal, I want to tour behind both of them. And then when we're done with that, we can talk about what we want to do,'" he said.

Buckingham is making good on his end of the promise.

He just released the album "Gift of Screws" and will perform at UCLA's Royce Hall on Sunday and at the Grove of Anaheim on Sept. 19.

He gained fame with Fleetwood Mac, one of the biggest selling acts of all time, and which was inducted to the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.

He recorded his first solo album, "Law and Order," in 1981 and also recorded "Holiday Road," the song from "National Lampoon's Vacation."

Buckingham's last solo record, 2003's "Under the Skin," was a way for him to take his finger-picking guitar style and develop it as a bare-bones idea, adding production values.

"It was certainly more of a boutique kind of thing," Buckingham said.

But "Gift of Screws" is filled with more rock tracks. He said it wasn't his original intention, but where the music went.

"You follow the work and let it lead you. As soon as I got some of my mates from the road, some of my road band, down into the studio and we started cutting, everything just wanted to rock," he said.

He said that in making the album, he wasn't facing the challenges he usually did. Creatively, his personal life fueled the record.

"We used to use that old adage, 'Children are death to the artist,' but I've found that to be just the opposite. It feels to me that I'm in the most creative time of my life right now," Buckingham said.

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by MacMan

"You follow the work and let it lead you. As soon as I got some of my mates from the road, some of my road band, down into the studio and we started cutting, everything just wanted to rock," he said.

Did Lindsey really say "mates?"

I won't have it! Christine, John and Mick have corrupted him.

Michele