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New album reviews
https://riffmagazine.com/album-revie...ckingham-2021/
REVIEW: Lindsey Buckingham tips his hat to ’60s pop on solo album Sam Richards September 13, 2021, 12:32 pm facebooktwitterstumbleupon Lindsey Buckingham, Fleetwood Mac Track Lindsey Buckingham on Bandsintown After what nearly amounted to a Fleetwood Mac reunion album with 2017’s Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie, the first solo album from Lindsey Buckingham in a decade sounds as if it could have been the second disc of the fine 2011 solo release Seeds We Sow. Lindsey Buckingham Lindsey Buckingham Reprise, Sept. 17 8/10 That isn’t a bad thing at all; far from it. The new self-titled album is full of songs that meld pop hooks ranging from pleasant to glorious with instrumentation—layers of acoustic guitars, in particular—that give the songs a subtle edge while maintaining, even magnifying, their sweetness. Where Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie seemed to be striving for the sound of the late 1970s and mid-1980s glory years of Fleetwood Mac, the new solo album turns back inward. Lindsey Buckingham, like most of Seeds We Sow, is a true solo effort, with the guitarist playing all the instruments and doing all the singing. And if there’s a lack of the immediacy of his classics like “Go Your Own Way,” “Monday Morning” or “Big Love,” there’s a depth of musicality that hits just as fast, if not quite as hard. Buckingham was always the Mac member most likely to tip his cap to classic pop radio. For example, “I Don’t Mind,” with its cheery vocal choruses and sprightly layered guitars, sounds somewhat at odds with his breathy, mysterious singing. But the overall effect is mesmerizing, especially if you’re a fan of ’60s-style radio-ready pop. It’s like that, but with a comforting bed of acoustic guitars. It’s the kind of music that he makes best. Similarly, “On the Wrong Side” is like a Mac song Lindsey Buckingham would have written, only shorn of the influences of other band members. While your mileage may vary, this listener sees that as an advantage. The song is about the ups and downs of being on the road with Fleetwood Mac: “I’m out of pity, out of time/ Another city, another crime,” he sings, getting philosophical. “We were young, now we’re old/ Who can tell me which is worse?” This song also includes the only extended electric guitar solo on the album, and it’s fantastic. “Blind Love” is perhaps the most blatantly pop song here, about never stopping the search for the perfect partner. It is as if Buckingham took a classic early ’60s song (think Ricky Nelson’s “Dream Lover” and its ilk), and modernized the sound in a tastefully acoustic way. There are modern touches scattered here and there. Both “Swan Song” and “Power Down” are driven by jittery drum loops; appropriate especially on the latter, where “powering down” could mean either turning off your laptop or disengaging from a relationship. “Swan Song” is an outlier on this album; unsettled and nervous, even if a tasteful acoustic guitar floats in and out. The other outlier is “Dancing,” the album closer. It’s slow and ethereal, with Buckingham’s breathy vocals playing against both a strumming guitar that sounds like a harpsichord and moments of silence. The song isn’t about dancing, per se, but rather the holding pattern of life between happenings dreary or worse: “Emptiness goes where supply meets demand/ Business and murder, they go hand in hand.” Also here is a reverent cover of “Time,” as performed in the mid-’60s by the Pozo-Seco Singers, a folk trio in which Hall of Fame country singer Don Williams first gained fame. In a sense, this song is a left turn on an album populated with left turns, its unadorned simplicity in contrast to the textured songcraft of most of the rest of the material. “Dancing” and “Time” aside, Lindsey Buckingham is an upbeat, frequently delightful album that, on the surface, may seem a bit quaint. But these songs are more complicated, musically and lyrically, than might be apparent on first listen. And with most of these songs, that first listen will suck you in, anyway. |
Pitchfork review
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums...ey-buckingham/
Lindsey Buckingham Lindsey Buckingham REPRISE • 2021 7.0 BY: ALFRED SOTO On his first solo album in 10 years, Lindsey Buckingham’s insistent, almost irritating knack for melody suggests a resurgent talent for making his insularity accessible. In the blissful exile of the recording studio, Lindsey Buckingham dreams of a dozen music boxes tinkling beautifully in various keys without cease. His melodies yield to other singers with extreme reluctance; they and he need coaxing out of their often truculent self-reliance. Yet for three decades fans could count on Buckingham donating tunes to Fleetwood Mac from a mysterious solo album he was tinkering with on the side, or to release this album himself, confident he’d gotten the bug out of his system. Not this time. Buckingham quit Fleetwood Mac in 1987, then came back a decade later to film The Dance and play in its subsequent world tour. In 2018, band manager Irving Azoff informed him that, according to Buckingham, Stevie Nicks had fired him (Nicks disagrees). It took Crowded House’s Neil Finn and no less than Mike Campbell to replace him in the band’s lineup; meanwhile, Buckingham returned to an album he’d completed before that year’s tour. He’s settled on an eponymous title for his first post-Mac album—a declaration of independence and defiance. Yet Lindsay Buckingham manages to be his best solo effort since 1992’s Out of the Cradle. No dilution of his composing or his production sorcery here: Buckingham, all by his lonesome, has recorded an album whose insistent, almost irritating knack for melody suggests a resurgent talent for making his insularity accessible. Where once his furiously strummed guitars, multi-tracked harmonies, and plickety-plockety programmed rhythms toughened the one-dimensional plaints, the lyrics and music of Lindsey Buckingham are in congruence, terms settled like a prenup agreement. Nicks and Christine McVie’s contributions to his Mac material added impassioned and rueful complements, respectively; now he coughs up the ambiguities on his own. “If you’re playing a part/I’ve got to understand,” he coos on “Blind Love.” Lest there be a doubt, he offers the following on “Power Down”: “Lies, lies are the only thing that keeps us alive.” On “Santa Rosa,” he repeats “if you go” not as a request so much as a conditional, singing of a “you” who wants to “leave it behind” as his guitar summons the essence of Sonoma County with a couple dulcet tones. The Buckingham of Law and Order (1981) and Go Insane (1984) would’ve kept howling and shredding, but here the prettiness of the tune suggests he’s made peace with the separation. Reliant on a tension between his need to confess a sense of hurt through psychobabble and the way his tunes eddy in place before surging forward, Buckingham has often come off as a producer stuck with the unforgiving mode of the pop song, instead of a singer-songwriter meeting his audience: The surly punk-influenced tunelets on Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk (1979), the undulant electronic suite on Go Insane, and the hermetic, forbidding grace of Gift of Screws (2011) use verbal tags as excuses for sonic experiments. But on the new album, Buckingham sharpens the familiar modes; its sheen is its own attraction. “I Don’t Mind,” with its touch-activated pitch experiments he mastered on Tango in the Night’s “Big Love,” is second nature to him. Because he’s Lindsey Buckingham, he includes a foil: the spare “Dancing,” in which he breathes the title cushioned by his own oohs, as delectable as a similarly arranged cover of the Rolling Stones’ “I Am Waiting” from 2006’s Seeds We Sow. To weave exquisite aural curtains protecting his private life has been Buckingham’s métier since the late ’70s; he has presented himself as an artist who shuns the world and its messes. For too long, veneration of his studio mastery resulted in underrating, if not condescending to, McVie and Nicks—longtime Mac fans grew up reading accounts of Buckingham saving their material. So besotted as a culture do we remain with the Solitary Male Genius that we breeze past credible accusations of abuse. Fans endure defensive psychobabble. The reward? In its poise, Lindsey Buckingham is an offensive gesture: nothing seemingly at stake, no fleshed-out objects of desire to trouble daylong studio sessions. It is an austere, beautiful, cruel album, a polished sword. |
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Yes, but does he like it? |
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I got my copy of the new disc today and listened to it 3x with the 3rd time reading lyrics and with high volume on my surround sound system. This will be my favorite solo album tied with OOTC. I’m digging every track as I do with OOTC and BuckMcVie. Blue Light as well as On The Wrong Side are the 2 songs that stand out as Fleetwood Mac songs that would have gotten major radio play back in the day. I have over played the first 3 tracks …..so I’m trying to pace myself with 7-10.
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NME review
https://www.nme.com/reviews/album/li...l-album-review
Lindsey Buckingham – ‘Lindsey Buckingham’ review: Fleetwood Mac visionary’s stellar return The artist's first solo album in a decade sticks to the world-beating path he’s mastered, drawing on love and lost relationships along the way By Rhys Buchanan 15th September 2021 Lindsey Buckingham. CREDIT: Lauren Dukoff Recent world events have proved deeply frustrating for musicians of all levels – even those once central to one of the best-selling groups of all time. The long dark tunnel stretches further back for Lindsey Buckingham though; after being fired from Fleetwood Mac in 2018, the visionary then faced life-saving emergency open-heart surgery in 2019 before the pandemic even hit. He described the three life-changing punches as “a trifecta of events that were completely off the charts.” It’s no wonder then, that Buckingham finds himself picking through the rubble as well as seeking light on his seventh solo studio album ‘Lindsey Buckingham’. On his first solo studio effort post-Mac, he’s intent on staying grounded musically and emotionally. The buoyant opener ‘Scream’ feels a fitting way to kick things off – the swift and sweet track gleefully casts those difficult and stormy days away. A sense of abandon cuts through the driving acoustic melody with innocent simplicity through the lyricism: “Lost in the language of your touch / Just like you’re wakin’ from the dream / Oh, I love you when you scream.” One of the record’s most enchanting moments comes early on with ‘I Don’t Mind’. A figure who has been embroiled in drama and heartache throughout his career, it’s no secret that Buckingham can pen an impacting love song. The track floats with masterful melodies as the lyricism elegantly picks apart the struggles and compromise of a long-term relationship. He’s just as effective when dealing with the more notable long-term relationship that came crashing to an acrimonious end. The rhythmic anthem of ‘On The Wrong Side’ deals with the feelings of his split with Fleetwood Mac: “I’m outta pity / I’m outta time / Another city, another crime / I’m on the wrong side”, he sings before cutting loose with a soaring emotionally charged guitar solo. There’s definitely some healing going on here. Even the most casual Fleetwood Mac fans won’t have to look hard to uncover the band’s classic hallmarks, which are dotted all over the listen. ‘Swan Song’ packs the deep velvety guitar textures once heard during the ‘Tango In The Night’ era; elsewhere ‘Power Down’ showcases the effortless grandeur of the timeless finger-picking behind their biggest hits. The album bustles with defiant spirit while leaning heavily on deeply catchy songwriting and production. And with Mick Fleetwood having reconciled with Buckingham back in March, it’s exactly the kind of triumphant return that could give his old band food for thought. |
I'll just repost what I put on the Hoffman forums, what an album...
I've heard the album as well. I try to be as objective as possible being a fan, but it's really remarkable; best work since Out of the Cradle. Beautiful melodies, with each song just softly touching many of the genres that have influenced him through his career. Sounds of folk, R&B, rock(50's and 60's), country, techno, that don't copy the past, but build on it and pay respect to it through his own creativity. Some really cool and inventive electronic textures, and great tones we know from him. An intentional thread to his past... Even one of the songs On The Wrong Side uses the title of a song he wrote years ago. Just a beautiful album with lots of stuff to dig into as I listen on repeat through the years. Can't wait for my Blue Vinyl to get here this weekend! |
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I’m so upset the blue vinyl sold out :(
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If you enjoy the particular coloring that vinyl provides, great, but no one should mistake "preference" for "better". Streaming is widely variable in quality, but Amazon Music HD (for example) provides LB's new album in better-than-CD 24 bit / 44.1 kHz. |
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Out of the Cradle is one of the greatest mastering of any rock/pop CD I own. Good example of how squashed things have become since 1992. |
A real rave from Louder Than Sound:
https://www.loudersound.com/reviews/...d-bold-futures Like discovering in your 40s that Neighbours is still going, there was something sweetly reassuring to hear that Fleetwood Mac were still at each others’ throats in 2018. According to Lindsey Buckingham, a spat about award show walk-on music and an unforgivable acceptance speech smirk saw him fired, at Stevie Nicks’ behest, and the drama didn’t end there. The following year he underwent a triple heart bypass following a heart attack. And now, in the middle of a divorce, he’s said to be patching things up with the dysfunctional Mac family. Rock’s greatest soap opera remains packed with cliff-hangers. Meantime, the fresh focus on his solo career – which Nicks claimed was behind his dismissal in the first place – has produced the first Buckingham album since 2011 (not counting the all-but-Nicks surrogate-Mac record that was 2017’s UK top-five Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie). And it proves that, musically too, there’s still a lot more story to be told. Frankly, it’s a dazzler; a dynamic folk-pop record steeped in style and bristling with modern touches. The gorgeous I Don’t Mind repurposes the chopped-up vocal effects of Little Lies in an attempt to create a sonic cubism. Swan Song is so swamped with R&B throbs, frantic EDM beats and processed backing vocals that Buckingham sounds like a man lost in the machine. The electronic ballroom western Blind Love, the bubbling electro-pop Blue Light and frail and amorphous closer Dancing would all slot beautifully on to a Magnetic Fields compendium. What Tango In The Night did for the evolution of Fleetwood Mac’s sound into a definitive 80s aesthetic, this album does for melodic folk rock in 2021. It’s a record about endings. Time is an enemy on both Byrds-y Pozo-Seco Singers cover Time and the experimental laptop-pop Power Down, either a very lively deathbed address or a digital divorce song driven by edgy nervous tension. Blind Love similarly smacks of couples counselling, while Santa Rosa details a family fleeing Los Angeles for the wine country in the style of a synthetic Bruce Springsteen. Most intriguing, On The Wrong Side tackles Buckingham’s backroom issues with Fleetwood Mac on tour – ‘another city, another crime, I’m on the wrong side’ – with the same sort of wailing exuberance that made Go Your Own Way a master class in sounding jubilantly miserable. Yet musically Lindsey Buckingham is all new beginnings and bold futures. Fleetwood Mac missed a trick by not having their name on it. |
Hear, hear!
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Most sane mastering nowadays targets avg. RMS at around -16 to -14 dB. Maybe LB really just likes the sound of highly compressed tracks? :shrug: |
pasting in some reviews that came out over the last few days.
http://www.musicistoblame.co.uk/2021...-turns-on.html Lo-fi twists and unexpected turns on Lindsey Buckingham’s new solo album When it comes to Fleetwood Mac, nothing should ever be taken for granted. Just when it looked as though the band had settled into a comfortable, pre-retirement holding pattern of greatest hits and sold-out stadia, Lindsey Buckingham managed to extend the soap opera for another season by getting himself fired from the group. While personal tensions have been widely cited as reasons for Buckingham’s departure in 2018 (surprise surprise!), reports have also surfaced that the legendary guitarist and songwriter was tiring of Fleetwood Mac’s seemingly endless laps of honour and wanted the band to commit to a more creative musical project. Now, released from the trappings of his former band’s commercial juggernaut, Buckingham has followed in Paul McCartney’s footsteps. He’s dispensed with other musicians altogether and retreated to his Los Angeles home studio to develop a new self-titled album — his seventh solo record and the first since 2011’s ‘Seeds We Sow’ – comprising ten refreshingly experimental and noticeably demo-like recordings. For an artist desirous of a new creative challenge, Buckingham wrong-foots his listeners entirely on the opening trio of songs, all of which occupy the same acoustic-driven, harmonically-rich territory that has served Fleetwood Mac so well over the past half-century. Fortunately, they’re all fantastic, suggesting that perhaps Buckingham has a point to prove to his old bandmates – look, I can still do Fleetwood Mac without you! It’s only from track four, ‘Swan Song’, that the album starts twisting and turning, gathering up wildly diverse musical ingredients – from ‘50s crooning to ‘80s country ballads – and putting them through the Buckingham blender. The results are mixed, but it’s never dull, and – unlike ‘McCartney III’ – the less successful experiments on ‘Lindsey Buckingham’ never hang around for too long, with a total running time of just 37 minutes. Recorded and produced by Buckingham with minimal outside interference, the album typically relies upon sudden guitar and synth bursts to inject energy into otherwise prosaic musical backdrops. It’s an approach that works particularly well on ‘On The Wrong Side’ and ‘I Don’t Mind’. Although the music sounds a little too perfunctory at times (‘Blind Love’ and ‘Santa Rosa’), Buckingham’s strong choruses ultimately bring the songs back on track. Elsewhere on the album, ‘Blue Light’ is built on a synth bassline so cheesy that it wouldn’t sound out of place at a child’s birthday party. That said, it’s astonishing to find this cheese-fest co-existing so comfortably on the same record as ‘Swan Song’ – an alluring blend of choppy, sampled backing vocals and ‘90s drum loops that builds and builds towards a heady climax of guitar wizardry. Despite the clunky rhythm section, ‘Blind Love’ is undeniably touching. With lines like “Blind love show me your soul / If you’ve been lying to me I’ve got to know”, it sounds like a timeless ‘50s love song, with a Buddy Holly-esque musical interlude thrown in for good measure. Buckingham has never been the most consistent wordsmith, and there’s the sense across much of ‘Lindsey Buckingham’ that the lyrics are slightly undercooked. ‘Blue Light’ is ridden with clichés – “Is it too much or not enough? / If you win or lose it’s all the same” – while ‘Dancing’ is almost entirely incomprehensible, concluding as it does with the head-scratching lines, “Emptiness goes where supply meets demand / Business and murder go hand in hand / Dancing”. However, the sincerity of Buckingham’s delivery generally sees him through. More importantly, his gift for melody remains very much intact. With a voice that’s still in great nick for a 71-year-old, he’s able to pick off melodies with ruthless efficiency. The upshot is that for all of its musical flaws, ‘Lindsey Buckingham’ is an extremely enjoyable album to listen to. Whatever happens next in the world’s longest-running musical soap opera, Buckingham’s latest effort demonstrates that he still has plenty to offer as a songwriter, and that sometimes it’s better for old-timers to wean themselves off their greatest hits and start afresh with a blank canvas. Tom Kirkham @finestworktom Image: Lindsey Buckingham Official Album Cover Author MusicIsToBlame at 9/23/2021 10:00:00 am |
https://stocki.typepad.com/soulsurmi...uckingham.html
LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM - LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM 21/09/2021 Lindsey Buckingham It seems to me that Lindsey Buckingham’s eponymously named seventh album is as much about the drama of Fleetwood Mac as it is about the music. Three years after getting sacked from Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham lays down his most Fleetwood Mac sounding solo record and kind of says, “See what you missed?”. Let’s look back at the drama… The 1973 album called Buckingham Nicks set it all rolling. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, very much a couple, had made a record of harmonious songs but were already fighting over the naked cover photograph. All that the two artists would become is right there on the tracks - Lindsey Buckingham’s instrumental invention and Stevie Nicks mystical voiced sugar coating. Crystal even found itself onto the couple’s first Fleetwood Mac record after Mick Fleetwood hears Frozen Love over the speakers of a studio he was testing and head hunts Buckingham immediately. He won’t jump without Nicks. I wonder how many times he looked back at that decision! Rumours is the new amalgam’s iconic piece but as it is well documented the seeming harmonious west coast sound is coming out of love stories of utter disharmony. Go Your Own Way or Never Going Back Again. The message was clearly heartache even if the sound was almost joyous! Fleetwood Mac’s career since has attempted to out do the interpersonal dramas of Crosby, Stills Nash & Young. Original members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, who Peter Green named his band after have kept the back beat while one minute Nicks, for 16 years Christine McVie and for a time Buckingham have huffed, stayed away, gone to rehab or got sacked! The 2017 Buckingham McVie record that should have been Fleetwood Mac, had Nicks not boycotted, was followed by Buckingham getting sacked. That was the last move. Fleetwood Mac touring with Heartbreaker Mike Campbell and Crowded House’s Neil Finn instead of their prime sonic consultant, arranger, producer. So, Buckingham who has always called his own work “esoteric and a little left field’ brings ten songs right into the centre and makes them utterly Fleetwood Mac accessible. So accessible that Time is almost Pat Boone croon and Dancing is more fragile than anything he has ever done, ending the whole thing with a hushed whisper. I Don’t Mind and Blue Light have the rhythmic signature finger picking while On The Wrong Side has the shiny guitar solo fade out. You can almost hear Nicks and McVie harmonies on Santa Rosa. That last comment might sum it all up. This is a fabulous record. Yet, you feel that it could have been even more brilliant. As Buckingham screams “look what you missed by sacking me” there is a kind of echo that says “How good this could have been if they’d all been getting on in this particular year”. Oh the drama. Posted at 04:36 PM in ALBUM REVIEWS | Permalink | Comments (0) |
https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...e_iOSApp_Other
Lindsey Buckingham: Lindsey Buckingham review – the sunniest pop and its flipside (Reprise) Exiled from Fleetwood Mac, the singer-guitarist’s sparkling latest album foreshadows his recent troubles Lindsey Buckingham. Undercurrents… Lindsey Buckingham. Photograph: PR Handout Phil Mongredien Sun 19 Sep 2021 10.00 EDT Lindsey Buckingham’s seventh solo album was originally slated for a 2018 release, but three years of personal tumult saw it repeatedly pushed back. Given that that period has seen him falling out with ex-partner Stevie Nicks (a feud that re-erupted this month, being sacked from Fleetwood Mac, and undergoing open-heart surgery and the collapse of his marriage, it’s perhaps a wonder it’s here at all. And yet despite the turbulent backstory, at first listen these songs sound effortlessly sunny: On the Wrong Side resembles Go Your Own Way shot through with the momentum of the War on Drugs; the sparkling I Don’t Mind wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Tango in the Night. The gorgeous Santa Rosa, meanwhile, is gossamer-light pop, and Blue Light’s chorus is unashamedly pretty. But although his recent troubles came after these songs were written, they are foreshadowed in the lyrics, the sugar-coated melodies not completely concealing darker sentiments. There’s an undercurrent of dissatisfaction in Swan Song (“Is it right to keep me waiting?”), distrust in Blind Love (“If you can lie to me, I’ve got to know”). The closer Dancing strips away the pop smarts completely, leaving just Buckingham’s voice atop minimal backing and revealing a real vulnerability beneath the gloss. |
https://dailymailupdate.com/adrian-t...at-solo-album/
Top Story ADRIAN THRILLS: Lindsey Buckingham swaps rifts for riffs on surprisingly upbeat solo album By Admin -September 17, 20210142 Share Lindsey Buckingham: Lindsey Buckingham (Reprise) Verdict: Catchy Californian pop Rating: 4 stars The road to Lindsey Buckingham’s first solo album in ten years has been bumpy. The former Fleetwood Mac singer and guitarist planned to deliver the record three years ago, but it was put on hold as he underwent heart surgery. Its release was further delayed by the pandemic. In June, the musician and his wife, Kristen Messner, separated after 21 years of marriage, and there’s also been another almighty row with his erstwhile bandmates: in 2018, he was ousted from Fleetwood Mac on the eve of the group’s 50th anniversary tour, and the ramifications of that split rumble on. Rather than feeling sorry for himself, though, Lindsey sounds remarkably upbeat. There’s some rueful reflection, but his infectious melodies are hard to resist, and there’s even a touch of the arty invention that was a feature of Fleetwood Mac’s 1979 album Tusk. Of the ten tracks here, only two are ballads. Buckingham, 71, made the album at home in Los Angeles, playing most of the instruments himself and providing his own backing vocals. The road to Lindsey Buckingham's first solo album in 10 years has been a bumpy one but it finds the 71-year-old rocker sounding remarkably upbeat The road to Lindsey Buckingham’s first solo album in 10 years has been a bumpy one but it finds the 71-year-old rocker sounding remarkably upbeat As the songwriter behind hits such as Go Your Own Way and Big Love, it's no surprise to find echoes of Fleetwood Mac's golden era on Buckingham's new record As the songwriter behind hits such as Go Your Own Way and Big Love, it’s no surprise to find echoes of Fleetwood Mac’s golden era on Buckingham’s new record He was the songwriter behind hits such as Go Your Own Way and Big Love, so it’s no surprise to find echoes of his old band’s golden era. Indeed, there are moments when it’s impossible not to wonder (longingly) what his former girlfriend Stevie Nicks or keyboardist Christine McVie might have brought to these songs in terms of additional harmonies. His legacy is most pronounced on the galloping rockers that open the album. Scream is energetic and rockabilly-tinged. I Don’t Mind features lyrics about the challenges facing couples in long-term relationships. On The Wrong Side, decorated by free-flowing guitar, is simultaneously about ageing and life on the road. The pace slows a little on Blind Love — an elegant song in the style of soul singer Sam Cooke — and the album’s sole cover, Time. The latter was a Stateside hit for 1960s folk-pop group the Pozo-Seco Singers, and Buckingham’s version, sticking faithfully to the original, is a nod to the American pop music he heard in his youth. There’s more introspection on Santa Rosa, as he lays bare his regret at a failing relationship, but the overriding sentiment is one of banishing bad feelings and staying resilient, a mood summed up by the sing-song lilt of Blue Light. In line with Fleetwood Mac’s reputation as rock’s longest-running soap opera, the album’s arrival has been overshadowed by group politics. Lindsey says he was ejected from the group because Stevie Nicks ‘wanted to shape the band in her own image’. She has hit back by claiming she didn’t demand his firing, while founding member Mick Fleetwood now just wants him back in the fold. All of which makes this a bittersweet addition to an ongoing saga. Fans of classic Mac albums, such as Rumours and Mirage, will be hoping for another reconciliation. In the meantime, Buckingham’s knack of composing perfect pop ear-worms remains undiminished. |
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts...mWBuZh-wOdY8sY
REVIEW On his new self-titled album, Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham chooses the light over the fight BRAD WHEELER PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 17, 2021 UPDATED SEPTEMBER 17, 2021 Open this photo in gallery After a heart attack and (another) feud with Stevie Nicks, former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham returns with a new solo album. CHANTAL ANDERSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE Drake and Kanye West are feuding. Meanwhile, Stevie Nicks says: “Hold my shawl.” In the days leading up to the release of ex-bandmate Lindsey Buckingham’s new self-titled album, the fractious former Fleetwood Mac couple were once again in discord. In 2018, the latter was booted off a Fleetwood Mac tour he wanted to postpone in order to accommodate a solo tour of his own. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Buckingham blamed his dismissal from the band on Nicks, his long-ago partner. “I think she wanted to shape the band in her own image, a more mellow thing – and if you look at the last tour, I think that’s true,” he said. In response, Nicks released a statement to the magazine: “To be exceedingly clear, I did not have him fired. I did not ask for him to be fired; I did not demand he be fired.” If one reads between the lines, the suggestion is that Nicks had nothing to do with Buckingham’s dismissal. Has anyone thought of bringing in the comparatively harmonic Oasis brothers Liam and Neil Gallagher to mediate the latest Fleetwood Mac he-said/she-said? Probably not. “Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom,” as a great song once put it. Which brings us to the eponymous seventh solo studio album by singer-guitarist Buckingham. It’s an acoustic, melodically agreeable affair with contemplative lyrics and restrained production. It’s deeply El Segundo – one is compelled to move West, hire an agent and embrace the earthquakes. The fury of something like Fleetwood Mac’s Big Love just isn’t there. Don’t be misled by the title of the opening song: Scream is a good scream, a gratified scream. “Nighttime’s the time I love so much, lost in the language of your touch,” Buckingham sings, his voice drenched in familiar reverb. It sounds like it could have been written for a Fleetwood Mac album – and maybe it was. The verse of I Don’t Mind is a more whispery Nirvana, but the chorus is sweet and sun-drenched. Though the third track On the Wrong Side is more up-tempo, its mood is wistful. Pretty guitar solos wind down to their destinations, like a top-down coupe on a coastal highway. Being on the wrong side of 70 seems to be what the 71-year-old is contemplating: Time is rolling down the road Now goes right in a hearse STORY CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT We were young and never old Who can tell me which is worse? There’s a retro vibe at work. Blind Love is dreamy pop from the Ricky Nelson era, and a haunting cover of the sixties folk song Time (originally recorded by the Pozo-Seco Singers) conjures a Roy Orbison-Brian Wilson duet. There are moments of cocaine-fueled tangos. And Santa Rosa could be a breakup song. Still, there’s more gentle resignation than fight to the record. The word “compromise” even comes up. One might even say the album is mellow – the same adjective Buckingham used to describe Nicks’s vision of the modern-day Fleetwood Mac. Seems like someone’s made a breakthrough here. Sign up for The Globe’s arts and lifestyle newsletters for more news, columns and advice in your inbox. |
https://theartsdesk.com/new-music/al...sey-buckingham
home > new music > album: lindsey buckingham - lindsey buckingham reviews, news & interviews Album: Lindsey Buckingham - Lindsey Buckingham A lovely reckoning with ambiguity, loss and Fleetwood Mac by their exiled leader by Nick HastedWednesday, 22 September 2021 Lindsey Buckingham was last in and first out of Fleetwood Mac’s classic line-up (quitting in 1987, and forced out by long ago ex- Steve Nicks in 2018). He was a would-be Brian Wilson in their midst, an unlooked for, maverick auteur whose first hit “Go Your Own Way” helped conquer the world, and confounding follow-up Tusk demanded much more. This is his seventh solo album, and they all exist in the Mac saga’s interstices, even as he strives for a purer, separate art, muddied by the band’s cocaine-clouded excess and soap opera along the way. Lindsey Buckingham was recorded after typical turmoil – for a Mac member, and any now 71-year-old – as his ousting was followed by 2019 open-heart surgery and ravaged vocal chords, now healed. The intimacies and compromises of a long marriage are one theme; his wife of 21 years, Kristen Messner, filed for divorce in June. This is an album braced for such shocks, despite its bright, solely Buckingham-made sound, stripped back yet detailed, like ornate pop demos given air to breathe, leaving their intent unsullied by Mac’s juggernaut. The Pozo-Seco Singers’ 1966 folk-rock hit “Time” is a gorgeous, courtly cover, with profundity waiting for Buckingham now: “Time, oh, good, good times/Where did you go?/...Some people never die, and some never live.” His voice reaches Roy Orbison high, with a late note’s jump perfectly poignant. “On the Wrong Side” adds the harsh weight of experience to this pretty account of loss, as his relationship with Fleetwood Mac gains wry detachment. It’s a sequel to “Go Your Own Way”, almost borrowing its chorus. “When my back’s against the wall/Still sometimes I compromise,” he admits, explaining the diplomatic treaties which have maintained his Mac presence. “We were young, now we’re old/Who can tell me which is worse?” he briskly asks, time now arriving in a hearse. This cool reckoning is ripe for an elegiac Mac reading. Buckingham’s rescued voice is great throughout, with a husky shiver at its edge on “I Don’t Mind”, where his guitar picking is needle sharp. Marital investigation ranges from a casual morning orgasm (“Scream”) to teasing out of the other’s private truths (“Blind Love”). But Lindsey Buckingham lives in an ambiguous, balanced world. You can hear it in the slow-motion urgency of the vocals on “Power Down”, Buckingham stretching out as if opiated or anaesthetised, in a lovely folk-rock hymnal of sour truths: “Lies, lies are the only thing that keep us alive/Time, time isn’t the one that’s on our side.” Or listen to the closing “Dancing”, as this studio control freak accepts his final helplessness, as “hope disappears, but the memory lives on”. He sounds keen and fresh, a New Wave tyro, as youth and life fade away. |
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Music review: Lindsey Buckingham - ‘Lindsey Buckingham’ By Clint Rhodes For the Herald-Standard Sep 23, 2021 0 The last few years have been particularly challenging for Lindsey Buckingham. Since 2018, the California native has experienced the pain of being asked to leave Fleetwood Mac, endured open-heart surgery, adjusted to being an artist during a global pandemic and coped with the added stress of marital unbliss. That being said, the 71-year-old singer-songwriter manages to come out for the better, sounding stronger than ever on his latest self-titled release. Written, produced and recorded by Buckingham at his home studio in Los Angeles, the 10-song set possesses signature touches from previous Buckingham solo efforts as well as other classic Fleetwood Mac material. Every track is carefully treated to Buckingham’s exceptional guitar skills, flawless vocals and revealing lyrics. With “Scream,” Buckingham opens the album optimistically by highlighting the many joys of having a companion share in the everyday moments that make up the day by proclaiming, “Nighttime's the time I love so much/Lost in the language of your touch/Just like you're waking from the dream.” Buckingham seems to take the bumps in the road all in stride with “I Don’t Mind.” “On and on and on we go now/Rain will fall and winds will blow now,” sings Buckingham with a renewed perspective for what lies ahead. “On the Wrong Side” finds Buckingham emotionally coming to grips with the departure from his former band by declaring, “Every now and then I fall/Every now and then I rise/When my back's against the wall/Still sometimes I compromise.” Buckingham covers “Time” from the Pozo-Seco Singers by giving the 1966 folk hit a simplistic sophistication with a heartwarming vocal performance that is tenderly captivating. While the opening arrangement focuses on the comforts of love, the tracks “Blind Love,” “Santa Rosa,” “Blue Light” and “Power Down” address the heartbreak of a fragile love and the desire to return to a simpler time when hope flourished and dreams were provided proper time to fully bloom. Buckingham’s first solo effort since 2011’s “Seeds We Sow” ranks as one of his best of seven offerings. Perhaps Buckingham sums up his life and career best when singing, “Living life in overload/That’s the way it's always been.” Whether alone or with Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham demonstrates that he still has plenty of great music to offer. |
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Creative peak demonstrates there’s life after Mac, according to Lindsey Buckingham. BY HELENA SUTAN ON SEPTEMBER 25, 2021ENTERTAINMENT Fleetwood Mac were the biggest band in the world, but they were also a captivating soft rock soap opera. They were known for having shady relationships, mainly with each other. Lindsey’s ex-girlfriend Stevie Nicks gave her bandmates an ultimatum three years ago: “Either he goes or I go.” “Get aht of my band!” as Peggy Mitchell would have said. Lindsey, who penned Tusk, Big Love, and Go Your Own Way, was fired as a result of Mac-xit. It got a lot worse. The guitarist/singer had a massive heart attack, lost his voice, and filed for divorce from his wife Kristen. Buckingham claims that his new solo album, his first in ten years, was composed primarily before all of that, putting him on par with Mystic Meg. It’s foreshadowing! On The Wrong Side is a cheerful, radio-friendly West Coast power-pop track about escaping the Fleetwood Mac circus. “Has the queen [Stevie?] lost her sight?” the driving Swan Song asks, channeling his dissatisfaction with the band’s unwillingness to recording. Dreamy but resolute I Don’t Mind deals with the ups and downs of love, while Scream, the album’s exhilarating opener, is an honest celebration of marital love, where joy and grief must coexist, he says. These ten tracks, recorded in Lindsey’s home studio, demonstrate that he hasn’t lost any of his compositional prowess. The sad Santa Rosa features an enormous chorus, as does the irresistible toe-tapper Power Down, which was inspired by Kristen’s attempt to move the family to a rural horse ranch. Blind Love is inspired by the 1960s, with a hint of the Beach Boys, and he performs the wistful, haunting 60s folk classic Time. Oh, where does time go? Lindsey Buckingham is approaching 72 years old, an age when most rock stars are content to pump out their greatest hits. However, this, as well as his 2017 record with Christine McVie, demonstrate that he’s reached a new creative height. |
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LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM, Lindsey Buckingham The story goes that the former guitarist of the poppier incarnation of Fleetwood Mac, the one behind the best-selling Rumours album, got kicked out of his own band’s 50th anniversary reunion shows in 2018. Things got worse for Lindsey Buckingham, what with subsequent health issues and marital woes. So it’s a surprise that he’s just released a self-titled solo album whose overall feel hardly reflects nor references any of his previous troubles. Instead, it radiates with an “I’m happy with where I am now” vibe. It’s there in track titles like “Power Down,” “Blue Light” and “Dancing.” Listen and he’ll enchant some more with the bristling EDM of “Swan Song,” the never-fail-to-charm revision of “Trouble” as well as roots folk-pop of “Time.” In hindsight, “Lindsey Buckingham” is one more proof as to who’s got the enduring smarts in Fleetwood Mac. |
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REVIEW: Lindsey Buckingham New Eponymous Album Is His Best Reviews September 27, 2021 Steve Semeraro On September 17, Lindsey Buckingham released his seventh solo studio album entitled simply Lindsey Buckingham (Rhino Records). The former Fleetwood Macster recorded the album at his home studio in LA, playing all the instruments and singing all the parts. He served as his own producer and engineer, mixing the songs with Mark Needham. Stephen Marcussen did the mastering, John Russo the photography, and Liz Hirsch the design and layout. To say that this is Lindsey Buckingham’s best work is, of course, saying something. But I say it with absolute confidence. Buckingham’s contributions to the first two Fleetwood Mac albums after he and Stevie Nicks joined the band are extraordinary. And perhaps this album — tinged with shades of Brian Wilson’s best work — can’t match those mid-70s odes to Buddy Holly. But Lindsey only needed to contribute two or three songs on those Mac records. Compared to his prior solo albums, Lindsey has reached a new level of excellence in a way that, arguably, no fourth quarter artist has ever done. We’ve been blessed with some remarkable albums of that genre in recent years. Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways and Springsteen’s Western Stars come to mind. But in those cases, the surprise was that those artists still had it. I don’t think anyone would argue that either album rivaled their best work. In Buckingham’s case, it doesn’t just rival it. It beats it. So enough with the plaudits. Lindsey and I go way back, figuratively speaking anyway. My high school girlfriend loved Fleetwood Mac. She tried to get me into a lot of stuff. She had me playing Dan Fogelberg, for Christ’s sake. But it took some doing for her to get me into the Mac. Fool that I was back then, I heard the hits as middle-of-road stuff. And let’s face it, the band just seemed weird. A crazy-ass drummer who looked like Charles Manson’s giant British cousin. Some guy who always seemed like he’d rather be golfing. Two chicks, and a pretty boy who sounded more like a girl than one of the ladies, both actually. And then there was the story of their Buckingham/Nicks pre-Mac album cover shoot. When the couple moved to LA to pursue a record deal, legend has it, Nicks supported them with waitressing jobs while Lindsey worked on his guitar technique. When they got the record deal, she saved up to buy a special blouse for the cover shoot. It cost a fortune that she didn’t have. Buckingham and the photographer made her take it off for some topless shots, making her cry, she said later. And then they used the nude cover photo anyway! It’s not that it wasn’t tasteful. But . . . On the other hand, as the story goes, when Mick Fleetwood heard a song from the Buckingham Nicks album, he impulsively offered Lindsey the guitar player spot in Fleetwood Mac, replacing Bob Welch. Lindsey, to his credit, was ready to turn it down unless they took Nicks too. She then famously broke up with him after the band’s initial success. But then, she put her hands all over him on stage two decades later. It’s the art, not the artist. I’ve always known that. But back then, this was too much for me. A few years later, I was living in a group house with a few guys, and HBO broadcast a Fleetwood Mac show from the Mirage tour. By this point, the on again/off again girlfriend had convinced me to pay closer attention. Things were probably off, and I wanted them to be on. With the irrationality of youth still running through my veins, I’d convinced myself that watching the concert would somehow strengthen my romantic overtures. It was a revelation. Buckingham was no pretty boy. On the contrary, he was one bad-ass guitar player with more talent and charisma in his pickless fingers than the rest of that band had in their entire bodies. Again, I realize, I’m saying something. Like her or not, there’s no denying Stevie Nicks’s appeal as a song writer, singer, and performer. But on stage with Fleetwood Mac, she’s No. 2, which may be why she ultimately did away with No. 1. Not that she didn’t have other reasons. I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about that after hearing more about the Lindsey Buckingham album. With newfound appreciation, I’ve remained a fan. I loved Buckingham’s quirky early albums that I once heard described as rock and roll whoppee cushions. I thought the “Holiday Road” single was brilliant. Over the next 22 years, though, Buckingham put out just one solo album, Out of the Cradle, which to my ears was a stinker, as were those that followed. I figured he’d lost it. But 2011’s Seeds We Sow suggested otherwise. So much so that I was excited when I heard Fleetwood Mac was recording a new album. The sad story, of course, was that Stevie Nicks refused to contribute any songs. So, they released the album as a Buckingham/Christine McVie duet. In fact, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie perform on the songs, making it a Nicks-less Fleetwood Mac album. While C. McVie’s contributions don’t do it for me, Buckingham’s songs are excellent. I think it is interesting that he was writing much of what would appear on this new solo album as the band fruitlessly sought to convince Nicks to contribute to that album. What happened next has been widely reported. Nicks agreed to tour with Fleetwood Mac, and they scheduled dates for 2018. But Buckingham had just finished the Lindsey Buckingham album. He asked to delay the band tour for a few months so that he could tour behind his new record. Apparently, this kind of request wasn’t unusual for the band and seemed comparatively timid when set against Nicks’s jerking them around with respect to the aborted new Fleetwood Mac album. But when the band accepted the Musicares Person of the Year Award, stuff happened. Buckingham didn’t think that the studio version of “Rhiannon” was appropriate walk-up music. And he was unable to keep that thought to himself. The camera may also have caught him smirking behind Nicks’s acceptance speech, again something not exactly unusual for this band. But Nicks took offense. One has to wonder if, at this point, she’d heard the then-unreleased Lindsay Buckingham album. We’ll never know, of course, but we do know that Stevie decided touring in a band with Lindsay was not going to be healthy for her. That put the others in a tough spot. Tour without her, or fire Buckingham. They chose the latter. And as they’d done when Buckingham left the band voluntarily in the late-1980s, they needed two guitarists to fill his shoes. Health and marital troubles hounded Buckingham for the next couple of years. So, his solo album remained in the can. Finally, this past summer, he released three singles and now the complete new album. The first track “Scream” starts off with a pumping acoustic rhythm that fills out with percussion, voices, keys and the magic the just feels like Lindsey. He uses vocal arrangements that, to my ears, mimic the sound of Fleetwood Mac, particularly as it sounded in combination with Nicks’s voice. The quirky relationship nature of the song is nothing new for Buckingham. But the quality of the lyrics is. Back in the 80s he claimed not to be a poet. The lyrics, he said, were the least important thing. Here, as on the entire album, they are clever, engaging and witty. “I Don’t Mind” is another mature on-going relationship song to which any long-term couple could relate. It sounds current and vital for anyone in their 30s, 40s, 50s, or Lindsay’s age. Finding current inspiration to write good songs has plagued song writers for centuries. Few have continued to deliver as Buckingham does here, on the verge of his 70th birthday. “On the Wrong Side” is a coming back/making-it-through-challenges song. It’s a driving beat with more engaging lyrics. “We were young, and now we’re old, who can tell me which is worse.” But it’s not a memory song, like you might expect. It’s a life is being lived song. With a tasteful, not show-offy, guitar solo. Next up is a disco flavored tune that may or may not be written for Stevie Nicks, “Swan Song.” An interesting song structure with verses describing the actions of the “Queen” and a chorus acknowledging that — while she hadn’t done anything that is necessarily bad — “is right to keep me waiting. Is it right to make me hold out so long.” It could be specific. But it is surely universal. “Blind Love” is a song to a lover that may not be in love anymore. Where “Swan Song” poses the question, this one asks for an answer to a question that we’ve all asked at some point. The simple lead guitar with wordless vocal is pure beauty. “Time,” the only non-original on the album, is a cover of the Michael Merchant song originally recorded in the mid-60s by The Pozo-Seco Singers. The version here begins with a lead guitar picking suggesting the passage of time. It fits perfectly in this collection of songs. A memory folk song that isn’t about living in the past. It’s about learning from it to deal with a vital present. A delicate music-box-like guitar figure opens “Blue Light.” This introspection song is new for Buckingham. The point seems to be that we can’t let the uncertainties of life slow us down. “Still dreaming about hope, still hoping about dreams.” It’s a good line. “Power Down” opens with a pumping guitar riff of the type Buckingham is known for. It’s a breakup song beginning with the intriguing lyric “lies are the only thing that keeps up alive.” Early reviews of this album marvel at how many of the songs seem to foreshadow Buckingham’s recent marital troubles. That’s possible of course. But lines like, “You said that your beginning was my end” suggest that he was writing about a breakup from the distance past rather than predicting a future one. If “Power Down” wasn’t a direct reference to a famous breakup, it seems hard to interpret my favorite song on the album “Santa Rosa” anyway other than “Go Your Own Way” with 40 years of life to reflect on and illustrate that there are more ways to breakup than romantically. Listen to the wordless vocal solo at 2:38 and tell me it’s not. I mean . . . come on. Amazingly, Buckingham has not been playing this song in his live set. If anybody reading this has his ear, please beg him to add it for me! And tell him to play Monday Morning too! I’ll be there in San Diego. This fabulous album ends with the haunting “Dancing.” Who do you think the dancing Raven is, the “girl with no place go”? This powerful song lyric hits so hard. But I like to think that it comes not from hate, but love. And perhaps that’s exactly what made it impossible for the real Fleetwood Mac to play together right now. And that’s why we can hope they will again some day. One line, though, I think Buckingham wrote about himself. “Love and surrender have all been and gone. Hope disappears but the memory lives on.” You can get more information on the Lindsey Buckingham website and buy Lindsey Buckingham at the artist’s on-line store on vinyl or CD. |
He has some good lyrics on it. But that “sometimes my soul is hot, sometimes it’s cold” is the very lamest. Some people treat me kind. Some people treat me mean. Does he have grand children that we don’t know about? Did they help him write this?
For me, the best lines are Another city, another crime. I’m out of pity. I’m out of time. Love in a Hearst is pretty good for a line. Swan song lyrics are good. I take Scream to be sex and oral sex. Good in a tall grass sense. When I got up this morning I was thinking of Miranda and I’d have to say those are probably his best lyrics. |
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ALBUMS: Buckingham Kicks The former Fleetwood Mac guitarist emerges from the darkness with his strongest solo album in years September 30, 2021 Stephanie Hernandez Lindsey Buckingham Lindsey Buckingham, Rhino Records 2021 With a career spanning half a century, Lindsey Buckingham’s pop sensibilities have yet to diminish, even after a three-year rough patch that would have put anyone else out of commission. Since 2018, he has been fired from Fleetwood Mac, suffered a heart attack and vocal cord damage, and of course, experienced a global pandemic.The album delayed for approximately three years, but Lindsey is back in full swing with his self-titled, self-produced, and self-written album: Lindsey Buckingham. Opening the album with a song that’s characteristically Buckingham, “Scream” features a steady rhythm guitar to drive the song, chiming bells, and lyrical Buckinghamisms such as, “Over and over, red, red rover.” With each facet of his pop-melody-mind on display, the song acts as the perfect hint of what’s to come on the album. The first single, “I Don’t Mind” is the track that truly showed us Lindsey is back and better than ever. With indie-pop flavors and wistful vocals that ricochet between the eardrums, his singular voice is able to create many layers of texture to encompass his lead vocal. Striking lyrics such as “Oh my love, the sky is burning,” along with the near perfect production of this song show that his compositional prowess is perfectly intact. Artist: Lindsey Buckingham Album: Lindsey Buckingham Label: Reprise Records ★★★★ (4/5 stars) The second single, “On the Wrong Side” seemed to perfectly coincide with his press cycle for the album – drama with Fleetwood Mac. Speaking candidly with Rolling Stone, Buckingham laid out his official side of the Stevie Saga, saying that she had him fired because she “wanted to shape the band in her own image, a more mellow thing.” He also made a few snide comments on Stevie’s personal life, to which Stevie responded, “We could start in 1968 and work up to 2018 with a litany of very precise reasons why I will not work with him. To be exceedingly clear, I did not have him fired, I did not ask for him to be fired, I did not demand he be fired. Frankly, I fired myself.” Featuring a ripping guitar solo and harmonies that sound reminiscent of Nicks-McVie, musically, “On the Wrong Side” is a song that can stand without context. With the added drama, however, the lines “We were young and now we’re old / who can tell me which is worse? / I’m out of pity, I’m out of time / Another city, another crime,” take on a whole lot more meaning – a feat that each member of Fleetwood Mac has capitalized on for the past 50 years. VIDEO: Lindsey Buckingham performs “On The Wrong Side” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert One thing about Buckingham’s career is that he is always evolving. The unexpected “Swan Song” opens like an early 2000s spy film, and we can imagine him standing there in a leather trenchcoat. Keeping with the times, Lindsey’s looping drum tracks propel the song as his guitar takes off and soars through to the ending. With a “Swan Song” typically denoting the end of an artist’s career, it can be insinuated that the chaotic track is a reflection of the tumultuous break with Fleetwood Mac: “Has the queen lost her sight?” With an international tour on his horizon, it is doubtful that he’s announcing his own retirement. Elsewhere on the album, “Power Down” features a similar sonic aesthetic as “Swan Song,” but this time outlining the feelings of heartbreak. A doo-wop style ballad, with a soft California feel, “Blind Love” unpacks a theme that is all too common in Lindsey’s catalog: uncertain love. The highlight of the track, as with most of his songs, are the soothing harmonies, but the percussion section is where we hear a blind spot in his production, with a rather generic drum track looping. Showcasing his folk roots, Buckingham’s cover of Pozo-Seco’s “Time” is an example of the music that helped inform his sound from the very beginning. His arrangement is much softer than the original version, but as the lone cover amongst a sea of self-penned material, the song occupies a sentimental space on the album. In December of 2020, I asked Lindsey about his lyrical stimuli, to which he answered: “I would say my lyrics have become more poetic over time, they’re sort of Rorschach Tests, more open to interpretation.” With folksy nylon-stringed guitars and philosophically tautological lyrics, “Blue Light” teeters on the edge of upbeat psychobabble. The melancholy romance of “Santa Rosa” is a glimpse into his troubled marriage with Kristen Messener, who recently filed for divorce (but he says they’re working on it!). In his interview with Rolling Stone, Buckingham explained that the song was inspired by a disagreement with Kristen, saying, “My wife wanted to move the entire family up to Santa Rosa Valley… she wanted to build a house on a horse ranch.” The lyrics to “Santa Rosa” plainly show that Buckingham did not want to leave his home in Brentwood: “We built our home with heart and soul / Oh, no I can’t let it go.” With windswept harmonies and a subtle reference to the 60s hit, “Baby, It’s You” (“It doesn’t matter what you say / I’m gonna love you any old way’), this song nostalgically traces the scenic top-down drive from Brentwood up to Santa Rosa. Lindsey Buckingham’s 2021 U.S. tour ends on December 20 in Boulder, Colorado (Image: Facebook) Bending towards the Baroque with the dulcet “Dancing,” each bright guitar strum sounds almost like a harpsichord as he psychologically unravels his thoughts in the style of a lullaby to close out the album. Oftentimes with artists of Lindsey Buckingham’s stature, new releases get ignored in favor of their old standards. His new, self-titled release, however, is not to be ignored. Songs like “I Don’t Mind,’)” “On the Wrong Side,” and “Santa Rosa” should all be considered Lindsey Buckingham essentials. One thing that this album makes crystal clear, is that Lindsey Buckingham can still write a really fu*king good pop song. |
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Lindsey Buckingham - Lindsey Buckingham (Album Review) 4/5 Wednesday, 29 September 2021 Written by Simon Ramsay As wrenching as the split first appears, there’s some weight to the idea that getting fired from Fleetwood Mac was the best thing that could have happened to Lindsey Buckingham. His former bandmates are happy to live off their history as a touring jukebox, but the guitarist’s first solo album in a decade shows he perhaps shouldn’t be wasting his time going through the motions. Completed three years ago, prior to his dismissal, and repeatedly delayed by a variety of factors, including well publicised health issues, marital strife and Covid-19, this sublime self-titled effort is a masterclass in sun-blanched transatlantic pop-rock, underscored by earthy folk sensibilities and flush with elegant melodies and spellbinding harmonies. If this were a Fleetwood Mac album it would be hailed as both late stage classic and a fitting recorded swan song. Buckingham knows how to make a chorus land. In tandem with sage chord changes and shimmering six-string embellishments, the sublime vocal arrangements on I Don’t Mind, Santa Rosa and Blind Love are spine-tingling as their refrains take hold. The fact he performed all those harmonies himself, before subtly tweaking them to ape his old band’s style, is remarkable. Where previous solo records often serviced Buckingham’s experimental tendencies, this is a more commercial, straightforward offering. That said, both Power Down—which cheekily mimics the riff to Stevie Nicks’ Edge of Seventeen—and Swan Song use funky beats and clever vocal effects to add contemporary flavours, with the latter blending modern R&B with EDM rhythms and fizzing flamenco outbursts without sacrificing stylistic cohesion or accessibility. Although the record’s themes are open to interpretation, nods to Fleetwood Mac abound. On The Wrong Side, a musically effervescent, but emotionally conflicted, romp in the mould of Go Your Own Way, he reveals how he became lost in all the never-ending melodrama. Closing lullaby Dancing, if aimed at a certain former lover, is as sonically sweet as it is poetically scathing. An awareness of life’s ticking clock has, over the years, grown increasingly prominent in Buckingham’s writing, and his fittingly melancholic cover of The Pozo-Seco Singers’ Time boasts added poignancy now the spectre of mortality has become a tangible, encroaching reality. All things considered, it’s disappointing to hear Buckingham say he’d happily rejoin Fleetwood Mac, but there’s always been a push and pull between his need for widespread recognition and desire to satiate the restless artist within. Having repeatedly been there, done that and set his legacy in stone, it’s time to leave the soap opera in the rear-view. Lindsey Buckingham Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows: Tue May 17 2022 - DUBLIN Helix Thu May 19 2022 - GLASGOW SEC Armadillo Sat May 21 2022 - LIVERPOOL Philharmonic Hall Sun May 22 2022 - LONDON Palladium Compare & Buy Lindsey Buckingham Tickets at Stereoboard.com. |
Another Lindsey Buckingham album review
it's been a few months since the album's been released, this review just showed up:
https://www.theaquarian.com/2021/10/...ey-hank-erwin/ On The Record: Lindsey Buckingham, plus Bruce T. Carroll, Sarah McQuaid, Sue Foley, & Hank Erwin Jeff Burger October 29, 2021 Columns, On The Record Wait – did Lindsey Buckingham rejoin Fleetwood Mac? That may be your first thought upon hearing his excellent seventh solo album, which was originally scheduled for release in 2018 and is finally seeing the light of day. Buckingham, of course, was unceremoniously fired in that year from the group he’d joined way back in 1975; and if his former bandmate and one-time lover Stevie Nicks has her way, he’ll apparently never be invited back. No matter. On his eponymous new album, Buckingham seems to be saying, “Who needs Fleetwood Mac? Not me.” And he may be right. The performances on Lindsey Buckingham sound quite like the tracks he created for such classic Mac LPs as Rumours, Tusk, and Mirage. The full band sound is here and so are the gorgeous vocal harmonies. That achievement is particularly remarkable because album projects don’t get much more solo than Lindsey Buckingham, which the artist recorded in his home studio. Not only did he write all the songs aside from Michael Merchant’s “Time” (a minor hit for the Pozo-Seco singers in 1966); he apparently also played not just all the electric and acoustic guitars but with the help of overdubbing, every other instrument as well, including bass, percussion, and guitar and bass synthesizers. In addition, he provided drum programming and all the vocals – including the omnipresent harmony work. On top of that, he produced and engineered the record and mixed all but one of the songs. Just about the only thing he didn’t do was manufacture the discs and distribute them to retailers. The past few years have not been easy ones for Buckingham, which may explain why a man who has had so much success looks so somber on the cover of this album. Besides being dumped from his group of more than four decades, he saw his marriage splinter, suffered a heart attack that almost killed him, and temporarily lost his voice because of a surgery. You can hear evidence of those experiences in the lyrics to these songs – or at least a foreshadowing of them since they were reportedly all written prior to Buckingham’s hard times. On “I Don’t Mind,” for example, he sings that “where there’s joy there must be sorrow” and on “Santa Rosa,” he laments that “we built our home with heart and soul…now you want to leave it behind.” In “On the Wrong Side, meanwhile, he seems to allude to the discord with Fleetwood Mac, and throughout the album, he makes other observations about the passage of time and turmoil in relationships. As any longtime fan knows, however, Buckingham has never been one to let romantic entanglements get in the way of exuberant melodies and ear-candy embellishments. Witness, for example, such early hits as “Go Your Own Way,” where he combines sunny and uplifting music with lyrics about a relationship falling apart, so it’s no surprise that Lindsey Buckingham delivers the same sort of upbeat pleasures. Informed by his consummate production, insistent rhythms, jangly guitars, and addictive melodies, the record grabs your attention with “Scream,” the opening track, and doesn’t let go until the final notes of the last cut, the atypically slow-paced “Dancing.” Though Buckingham issued an album with Fleetwood Mac bandmate Christine McVie in 2017, this 37-minute CD is his first solo release in about a decade. Let’s hope his next album doesn’t take nearly as long to arrive – and that it lives up to the high standard set by Lindsey Buckingham. |
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https://offthetracks.co.nz/lindsey-b...ey-buckingham/ November 13, 2021 by Simon Sweetman Lindsey Buckingham: Lindsey Buckingham Lindsey Buckingham Lindsey Buckingham Rhino I was so excited about this album I did something I don’t normally do and couldn’t keep up with if it became the norm: I wrote a gushing “preview” basically suggesting the greatness of the album and anticipating it after just one listen, also surveying the past solo catalogue. I’m a Buckingham fan through and through, always have been – and though I’ve enjoyed every version of Fleetwood Mac and seen the band live with and without Lindsey on stage it’s his special sonic ingredient that I think of first-equal with Peter Green’s. And these days I’m more about the Lindsey songs than almost any other version of the group. His solo career has long fascinated me but this self-titled album might be his very best. It arrived, too, with the twin baggage of being the record that got him booted from the Mac (this time) and being recorded just ahead of the health complications that threatened to sideline him from touring (or recording) again. Fortunately, he appears to have made a full-enough recovery and is on the road. The last two official Fleetwood Mac studio offerings, a double-album crammed down into one very long-player and a super-short EP, were both basically seeded from aborted Buckingham solo projects. His songwriting being what gets the band in the studio again. This time he wanted to keep the songs for himself. More so than on any of his solo albums since the early 1990s you can hear how these would have worked as Mac songs. But good on him for keeping them for himself. His melodic gifts shine and several of the tunes – opener Scream, big single I Don’t Mind and the sublime Swan Song – show how this pop songwriting master uses the guitar solo as a hinge and is able to conjure superb pop melodies still; in great vocal form and instrumentally dazzling as always. I wish Buckingham would value drums more – so keen on making ‘solo’ albums he resorts to simple, lazy drum programming and I’d love to hear him backed by, if not Mick, then some other great, real drummer. That’s the only real nit to pick here. The album is close to perfect otherwise – and shines and shines. There are throwbacks to Buckingham/Nicks (Time), to his 80s rockabilly/shuffle-influenced solo tunes (Blue Light) and nothing as insular as his 00s/’10s recordings. Instead, even the most multi-vocal and blindingly brilliant guitar-led pieces, such as Power Down, don’t give off the claustrophobic and exhausting vibes. They just sound bursting with life and energy and infectious pop magic. I’m still finding a new favourite song each time – after listening to it most days for weeks on end. I can’t say I expected that when I first went in, when I pre-emptively gushed about the magic Lindsey has offered. Here he bursts with brilliance again. |
Greil Marcus reviews new album
In his November Real Life Rock Top 10 column, Greil Marcus reviews Lindsey's new album. Surprised he gave it a positive review, as he did not like the Buck-McVie album.
https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/arti...november-2021/ 3. Lindsey Buckingham, Lindsey Buckingham (Reprise). Supposedly this was recorded before Buckingham was kicked out of Fleetwood Mac in 2018 and before his heart attack in 2019. It’s hard to credit, especially after the damp rag of the album he and then–Fleetwood Mac bandmate Christine McVie released in 2017, which seemed to signal neither had anything left. Everything here sings with delight. There’s pleasure in music-making that gives Buckingham’s confident, all-the-time-in-the-world singing a lift right out of “Blind Love,” a doo-wop ballad that sounds like something he and his high school friends made up while cruising up and down the San Francisco Peninsula instead of doing homework. On “On the Wrong Side,” his voice goes up and high and scratchy. He seems to get younger verse by verse, years flying off the calendar backward to the beat. |
I appreciate the last review, but how many times did they listen to BM? It had snoozers, but it had a few good songs. I think Lay Down for Free, was exceptional, for one.
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