Quote:
Originally Posted by tango87
I've always been in raptures about Lindsey and Richard's production on Tango. I know a lot of people disparage it as sounding cold and inorganic, but I really don't agree - I think it's so absorbing and sophisticated.
In a way, I feel it completes the mythical identity that had been part of their appeal since Stevie and Lindsey joined. I remember Rolling Stone's review saying it sounded like the band members were 'calling out to each other from the turrets of a castle through the mist,' (or something).
I was thrilled to see Richard on the recent BBC documentary about Christine, demonstrating that the iconic tinkly opening to Everywhere was actually Lindsey playing a half-speed guitar that had been sped up, rather than a Fairlight as everyone had assumed.
There's a lot more about Lindsey's incredible production in this great Salon article:
https://www.salon.com/2017/04/02/he-...-in-the-night/ |
I remember first hearing TANGO and being underwhelmed. I thought the only one of the three who sounded good in the new soundscape was Lindsey, that songs like “Caroline” and the title song had enough muscularity to work with with all the gloss. “Everywhere” seemed weightless and “Little Lies” sounded too synthy. But over time I realized how right the sound was. There’s a spaciousness and a sexy, sophisticated sheen over everything. Underneath it all is a loneliness, an ache for connection that speaks to the desperation of surviving the liberated seventies and persisting through the cold, corporate eighties. Of all the Mac albums, TANGO seems tethered, production-wise, to its time, but this actually MEANS something.
Anyway, over the years, the album became irresistible. Only Stevie’s two duds on side two ruin the flow.
Still, there’s a heart to “Gypsy” and a warm optimism to “Hold Me” and “Love In Store” that is absent on TANGO. It’s a smart record that expertly—and cohesively—documents estrangement. One hears in it a distance that undermines the band’s trademark chemistry. But that estrangement is its own aesthetic, and it’s compelling.