Buffalo News UTS Review

skcin · #1 10-17-2006, 11:06 AM

I felt so happy & proud when I read this:

Quote:

Lindsey Buckingham

Under The Skin

[Reprise]

Lindsey Buckingham's "Under the Skin" is, whether it intends to be or not, a concept album detailing the struggle inherent to the artistic process. It asks one of the big questions weighing on artists not willing to be wholly narcissistic: How does one maintain the childlike outlook necessary for unfettered artistic creation while wrestling with an adult reality?

"Under the Skin," Buckingham's first solo album in 14 years, is also a fully actualized work of musical genius, from the opening rapid-fire, finger-picked acoustic guitar arpeggios that signal "Not Too Late," until the final jazzy chord changes of the elegiac "Flying Down Jupiter" cease reverberating.

Buckingham, best known as the main artistic force behind Fleetwood Mac, has created a record both grandiose and small. Its title is an appropriate one, for Buckingham - a master guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer - is able to speak directly to the listener in an often disturbingly intimate manner. This is the sound of a man who has more than most of us could ever dream of having, wrestling with his own artistic impulses.

What keeps the record from being too self-referential is the universality of Buckingham's struggle, which centers around an attempt for balance between the imperatives of the self and the need to be a decent human being, father and husband. You hear it in "Not Too Late," as he laments the fact that "I'm not a young man, but I'm a child in my soul/I feel there's room for a man who is whole/And there's a need for songs that are sung/For chances not taken, for deeds not yet done." There's a resilient spirit at work here, one celebrated by the jaw-droppimng virtuosity of the guitar figure that propels the song. But there's also a nebulous feeling of being insufficient, as Buckingham breathily intones the song's kicker - "My children look away/They don't know what to say."

Buckingham can just as easily celebrate love's rewards, as he does during the jubilant Brian Wilson-like bounce of "Show You How" and "It Was You." But the core of the album lies in the knotty emotional complexity of "Cast Away Dreams," a stirring half-whisper of melodic brilliance that seems to suggest, as precious a conceit as this might seem, that the artistic temperament prohibits a true communion of souls.

Because Buckingham is so subtle, and marries these thoughts to such indelible compositions, they hit, and deep. "Under the Skin" is certainly one of the finest records you'll hear this year.

- Jeff Miers