Quote:
Originally Posted by shackin'up
(Post 1090787)
I'd be surprised if Without You has Mick and John on it. Sounds like Lindsey playing around with GarageBand. That the most notable irritation I have with this release. You don't put out a digital clicktrack in place of Mick and John under the Fleetwood Mac name. Shame.
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If I was understanding the whole process of how these tracks got recorded correctly, I don't think Mick and John were there when they did Without You. I was under the impression that Stevie and Lindsey did that song on their when she went to his house to record for those few days. Possibly because it seems in the beginning Stevie wasn't intending it for Fleetwood Mac but wanted to hold it back for a Buckingham Nicks release (and also possibly because Mick and John were in Hawaii, and they were in LA...).
I really like all of the songs on the EP, honestly. I'm not too keen on a lot of the production (I think Miss Fantasy has the best out of the 4, probably). I can't say I particularly love Lindsey's vocals... in fact, if I'm being completely honest, I think he sounds really weak a lot of the time. I'm not sure why but his voice always sounds so much stronger to me when he's singing live, so when I hear him on recordings like this I'm let down a bit. It's not even just the whisper vocal thing (which I dislike, but could deal with), he's just pitchy a lot of the time. But I can overlook that to a degree because I do like the melodies and the arrangements overall.
Sad Angel was pretty much what I expected after hearing the live version. I love Stevie's vocal on this especially, and John and Mick are fantastic as always.
It Takes Time was a definite surprise, and I'm pleased to learn Lindsey is playing the keyboard part. I seem to remember him saying at one point he thought it would be interesting to one day try to write an album using the piano instead of guitar. I wonder if this song was translated from guitar to piano or if it started out that way. Anyway, it's very nice. I don't think it's worthy of being compared to Songbird (and I'm not even that big of a fan of Songbird), and the obviously synthetic strings kind of rub me the wrong way. But I like it, and its something different.
I love Without You as a song, but I agree with those who have lamented the production. The guitars almost sound like midi instruments and they're way too upfront for my taste. I would have preferred a more.. airy arrangement, with more sound so the vocals could stand out. Oddly enough, even though the song is fairly simple and doesn't actually have many parts going on, it still seems stuffy because of how everything was mixed.
Miss Fantasy is my favorite right now and reminds me a bit of Can't Go Back. I really like the guitar on this as well as the chorus. Classic Mac harmony (although the mixing of Stevie's vocal in the chorus confuses me a bit). Very very catchy, and I honestly think this might have been a better one to plug than Sad Angel because it's kind of a mix between the pop and the folk-rock type stuff, which is popular nowadays and is what I think was always Lindsey's strength in FM as a songwriter to begin with. I was slightly disappointed when Stevie never joined in and alternated "I remember you's" with him at the end, for some reason.
