But it would be a little distracting. They should have someone come out BEFORE the show and tell the audience about it and have them download.

Michele

That's a good observation. Indeed, it feels as if the band is aiming for a pop sound that to my ears is flaccid and uninspired with thick, loud production that sucks the soul out of the material. A quieter, more folksy approach a la Buckingham Nicks with the kick-ass rhythm section that is Mick and John would certainly be a much better way to go. Let's face it, this band can't get past its obsession with reliving the glory days, and they are making very, very odd choices in their futile attempts to do so.

Completely agree.

LOL, but no. Lindsey's fingerprints are all over that ghastly guitar tone. It is truly awful.

True that.

Disagree. There's no major label involved, right? So the decisions fall on the shoulders of the band, which made a calculated move to have this god-awful modern production that sucks the dynamics and beauty out of the sound.

The demo version of Without You is so haunting and beautiful.
And when they performed it live, I was teary-eyed. But the version from the EP is...Eh. It's missing something.

I asked Mick on Tuesday who played the piano on ITT, and he said it was Lindsey. He went on to say how beautiful it was, and how he believes it is a "calling card to Stevie." Among other things I'm having problems recalling..:sorry:

Reviews? Well folks, here is mine.

And it is not pretty.

--------------------------

Wow. As Stevie once said... ~ this hurts my everything~

Sad Angel has a few catchy moments. It has a bit of 50s jangle, which is kind of cute, and the usual fast tempo Lindsey frantic pace that we are all used to and/or tired of by now. Thankfully it is free of the speed picking, but the post chorus is garnished with a GYOW lead line rip off. The song is essentially centered around that line. It becomes old real fast. I liked it better live. At least it did not sound recycled live. This studio version sounds like someone took GYOW and a sped up Empire State and put them in a blender.

I heard Without You in the late 70s on a bootleg album which I still have. I have not had it out of the plastic since perhaps 1982. And that is probably a good thing. This is the same arrangement. Which shows approximately the same songwriting craft exhibited in The Goldfish and The Ladybug. A low rent ripoff of Tea For The Tillerman. This shows the absolute worst of what a Stevie demo can be. Kind of crafty and cute in the late 70s as a demo. Now? Just embarrassing for everyone involved. Singing Yeeeeahh! as a dramatic interlude is about as lame as Stevie screaming Weeeeeellllllll! on TOSTM when she could still scream and had no better word to fill the musical space. Cute but devoid of meaning and movement. And neither of them can truly scream anymore. Space filler. Is that really all you have after 40 years of songwriting. Yeaaaaaaaaahhhhhh? Are you kidding me?

This song features first year guitar student chord changes and utterly insipid lyrics. I can see Lindsey cringing as he plays this part, pretending like he is a novice guitar player strumming CSN songs out of a Mel Bay chord book. Yikes.

It Takes Time is the attempt at a gem here. Yes the Slow and Cross auto tune note jumps make my teeth hurt. The verses in general are excruciating. But what passes for a chorus is gorgeous. I hate the Lindsey whisper vocals as a rule. But here, in a slow environment, they sound gentle and sincere. The strings are well done though synthetic, and quite effective. Years ago I remember posting on the ledge bitching about Lindsey and wishing he would do a song with piano only. And here it is. Studio foolery undoes it with those autotune note jumps and the clunky verses, but it is a valiant effort, and by far the most interesting of these 4 songs. He is stretching his wings and it feels good to hear it. It ultimately fails and is an incomplete song, but it sounds like the start of something very promising.

Speaking of painful verses. Miss Fantasy features the most cringe inducing vocals I have heard on a professional recording. The phrases ~sea of blue~
and ~black and blue~ sound like ME singing after a two day bender drinking tequila and chain smoking. WTF? My entire body recoiled. If anything should have been autotuned, seriously. This just HURTS. The rest of the chorus is kinda sweet, and has some old school FM harmonies that are quite nice. But this song falls FLAT. It is one thing to go for garage band rough, but for the love of Frank, do a vocal slide without hitting 3 bad notes along the way.

It seems to me that both Miss Fantasy and Sad Angel are some kind of chiffon kissing gestures. They are so blatantly about Stevie that Helen Keller could figure it out. It is almost as if Lindsey decided that he needed to write songs about Stevie simply because Thrown Down, EFO and countless others, she has regrettably admitted, are about him. As if, OMG! All FM songs have to be about the 35 years dead SN/LB romance! The problem is, Stevie writes songs that could literally be about anything. And they sometimes, but not always, work. When they succeed, they seem universal. I submit TD and EFO are universal. He does not have that skill. These things come off as pandering, obvious, and as far as I am concerned, they are just a bore. They are totally about any romance, sure. If by any romance, you mean the professional/personal romance between him and Stevie. The crowd screaming for more? 10 thousand voices crying out for more? Linger up against a wall? Really? Is it possible for me to puke up my lunch from two days ago? If I could, I would.

Lindsey is not known as a great lyric writer but for crying out loud at least Stevie shrouds her self referencing tripe in what passes for her as POETRY. At least she makes an effort to make it opaque. This is 12 year old lyric writing. And it clunks as bad as the fake rusted, fake iron, plastic, Chinese child slave assembled, poly silk rose encrusted, bought at Bed Bath and Beyond chains of Gate and Garden. Phony phony pinoy phony. I am rarely offended by anything. And I cannot truly say this pandering OFFENDS me, but it makes me wrinkle my nose, squint my eyes, shake my head, and want fresh air. Yes, Stevie, I agree. It hurts my everything.

If this is what they are putting out to see if the world wants a full album - for the love of god, STOP. Stop this madness at once. I hope no one spent a dime on it. From the lack of promotion and marketing that seems to be true.

This band is creatively as inert as the SN/LB romance. And now it is all both of them write about. Him less skillfully than her.

Collect your paycheck. Go back to your solo careers. And do this again when you all need another 7-10 million bucks on a tour in 4 years.

The band is creatively DEAD. And these 4 songs are the barely alive but stinking living proof. In fact, they stink like the dead skunk my pool guy fished out of the pool last week. After it was in the trash bin for 3 days in the Los Angeles heat.

I hope NO ONE buys this crap. And they just do the jukebox merry go round tours and carry on with the solo stuff that they actually give a rip about.

sparky For President.

I'm slightly milder, but basicly, this review is definately a way one could look at it.

Goodness. Yeah, that definitely is one way to think.

Do you write for some website or is this just for our enjoyment? All of us who already bought the EP.

LOL, and I thought I was being harsh. I agree with almost everything you said. I only differ on your assessment of the song "Miss Fantasy." Yes, it's cringe-worthy to some extent, and I agree about the silliness of the subject matter, but it is the catchiest number, in my opinion.

Here's the problem, as I see it, with Lindsey now: We have come to expect weirdness. And those of us who like that are disappointed when this EP stuff is what he can offer to FM. I mean, if he wants to go pop, then why not emulate the best pop that FM ever created, which was Rumours? Instead, we get this kind of FM white album meets Mirage meets solo-pop Lindsey, and it's so contrived it hurts. I'll go with the This Is 40 songs over this any day. At least the production of those tracks is warm and organic. This EP is just pukey production-wise.

I think that Sad Angel and Miss Fantasy are two of the best songs from FM since Tango In The Night.

I also like blue better than any other color, and anyone who doesn't must be insane. :p

I liked the fact that he was trying to hit notes out of his reach and didn't resort to studio wizardry to do it. The song sounded more honest because of that and I thought it was in keeping with the content, not getting the past back, but remembering it. I wouldn't want him doing it on all songs, but as a contrast to what got polished in SYW, I like to hear the unvarnished.

Michele

Yes, I'm double to that vocal too. Unvarnished, OK, but the rest isn't, so it seems a bit out of place....not in the content, but in the form.

i think these posts should be moved in another thread - reviews by fans, or perhaps that thread with poll about which song is a favorite where there is a lot of discussion like this.

this thread was supposed to be for "official" reviews... which i guess would mean at least a public blog, not just a post on facebook or a message board?

i wouldn't harp on this, but i find myself answering the same question over and over in 10 different threads b/c it became completely unclear which thread is talking about what anymore :laugh:

I'm reading some of the reviews on iTunes and it is getting ALOT of bad reviews simply because Chris is not in the band. It's a huge issue. Also, it's being penalized for not having more Stevie songs. I really wish Stevie would of put another song on this album. She wants people to buy the record but she wouldn't record any songs for it.

I don't quite get the complaints about there not being enough Stevie on the record. I'm as big a Nicks fan as they come, but she wasn't exactly super-present on many of the Mac albums of yore, was she? It doesn't seem like such a surprise to me. As far as I know, Say You Will is the only album in the band's history where songwriting and lead vocal credits were divided up so precisely evenly. 1/4 songs is actually exactly proportionate to her presence on every album from Tusk -> BTM. *shrugs*

I just dislike the EP because of the icky production and the fact that it seems like this band doesn't really have a lot to say anymore. All of the sounds on here are ones that feel a bit too familiar to me, and for a band that's historically been all about change, that's a disappointment.