Quote:
Originally Posted by PenguinHead
Tusk was and is a very significant work in that matter. Yet the backlash for not following the status-quo really bruised his ego, and he retreated. Only in his solo career could he branch out. Law and Order was so out of left field because it furthered his statement of rebellion, and the origins of the Small Machine. With Christine's departure, he is now the single driving force of the band. Let's hope stubborn Stevie will get on board. I'd love to see them do an album as quirky, loose and challenging as Tusk, and not one so uniformly steely and morose as Say You Will.
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This is interesting as I seem to have things differently in my head. I saw Rumours as more the start of overly-polishing and over-dubbing everything. The band were obviously fragmented on a personal basis of which much is made and often couldn't be in the room together for long, sort of like with The Beatles' White Album. Tusk was an exaggeration of that so it was more phoned in by some and Buckingham was left to obsessively polish everything and put a lot of solo stuff on as a group recording. To top Rumours he went further into layering on effects, and odd sounds like the marching band, and a t6wo LP set no matter if there was two LPs of material there. Ambitious yes, successful, not so much I felt. As someone who bought the stuff when it came out I felt he was following Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson and the new wave guys rather than being originally driven, and I missed his excellent guitar either buried under the effects and icing or not there at all in favor of quirky synths in place of band members.
Probably the real fault of Tusk to me is the laziness of the other members or their distractions in planning solo albums. Plus the hair styles were so elaborate and expensive in the photos, and that always puts me off an artist!
I just don't see Tusk as Fleetwood Mac album. It is bits of what might have been one and a lot of solo Buckingham stuff, much half finished in my opinion and suffering from a sameness where they almost make one mass of quirk popping up between Christine and Stevie second drawer material that had to be made do with.
I'm glad some people enjoyed it where I was disappointed. Next to albums by Costello, Jackson, The Clash, Boomtown Rats, various skinny-tie U.S. power-pop (The Nerve, Cars, Blondie, Talking Heads) and whatever else I had around at the time it seemed second rate unfortunately but honestly. To you it was genuine rebellion and to me it was grasping and following a trend.
Thank you Tusk defenders for the opportunity to think and listen further though! I guess I'm a hopeless Derelict enjoyer, it moved in with me some time ago along with Danny and Peter and Bob, after I bought Tusk all excited and then found myself almost never playing it.