Crystal Visions Reviews

[SpyNote]

Originally Posted by PenguinHead

I'm surprised by the utter disdain some people have for the Dreams remix. Granted I'm no fan of techno dance music -- I find it tedious, vacant and souless, and it has a limited shelve life. Yet, as one reviewer mentioned, it did give Dreams a facelift.

I thought it was a good project. It brought Stevie's coolness factor up to other audiences and showed that she isn't always the aging rock star resting on her laurels.

My only gripe is that the edit on Crystal Visions is very sloppy.

[Livia]

http://www.music-critic.ca/wp/2007/s...-very-best-of/

Stevie Nicks - Crystal Visions … Very Best Of review at music-critic.ca Rating: 4/5
Released: March 27, 2007
Reviewer: Tyrone Castanho

I can remember being six or seven years old, all hopped up on punk and ‘80s metal, when my mom threw on a belting Stevie Nicks vocal track from her younger days. Don’t ask me why parents endeavour to force their kids to embrace the music of their time, but I’m thankful for the Fleetwood Mac exposure. Stevie Nicks’ haunting grasp of poetry has led to rumours of witchcraft, but her unique ability to maintain a cutting edge career as both a solo and band artist are what truly capture listeners.

Crystal Visions is a compilation album that spans the majority of her solo career with remastered sound and clarity monitored by Nicks herself and various production partners such as Sheryl Crow, John Shanks, and Jimmy Iovine. ‘Edge of Seventeen’ opens the album and some fans may recognize the opening guitar riff from the Destiny’s Child track ‘Bootylicious,’ further reinforcing the relevance of Nicks’ music for the contemporary listener. It’s no surprise, considering her work with long-time friend Waddy Wachtel has produced numerous memorable songs, including ‘Landslide.’

Her grassroots influence shines through on ‘Sorcerer,’ a song that exudes the southern state atmosphere of her Arizona background with expert guitar work and vocals. Of course, for some of us, you’ll wonder why there has been no mention of ‘I Can’t Wait’; the truth is, the song speaks for itself and needs no hyperbolic support considering the vocal track was performed once and once only. With talent at hand like that, the breadth of her work knows no bounds.

The album chases you with every direction it takes with some trance-dance worthy instrumentals. Honourable mentions go to ‘Silver Springs’ with its great Fleetwood Mac feature, ‘Dreams’ and the highlight, a cover of ‘Rock and Roll’ by Led Zeppelin.

[Livia]

Stevie Nicks: Dreams Unwound

[16 May 2007]

Alternately revered and ridiculed, Stevie Nicks has impacted an entire generation of artists with her bewitching tales and stirring stage theatrics. Crystal Visions traces the tangled web of her solo career.
by Christian John Wikane

Onstage with Fleetwood Mac during the ‘70s, the sylphlike Stevie Nicks would introduce “Rhiannon” with the explanation, “This is a story about a Welsh witch”. She became so possessed by her tale about a woman “taken by the wind” that the singer and the song appeared to become one. “Dreams unwind / love’s a state of mind”, she’d scream and shout into the microphone, arms flailing at her side in black chiffon. Ever since, Nicks has remained one of rock’s most mysterious figures, alternately celebrated and vilified, revered and ridiculed. Her impact on an entire generation of artists—from Hole to the Dixie Chicks—has been far-reaching, yet she’s not generally considered a “serious” songwriter by the male-dominated rock-critic elite. Borrowing its title from a phrase in Nicks’s “Dreams”, number one single from Rumours, the recent two-disc set Crystal Visions neatly defines an artist whose career has been a web of tears and triumphs.

Success almost escaped Stevie Nicks. The failure of Polydor Records to successfully market Buckingham Nicks in 1973 almost extinguished the career prospects of Nicks and her musical/romantic partner, Lindsey Buckingham. A phone call from Mick Fleetwood, the nerve center of Fleetwood Mac, saved the duo from obscurity. Their slightly left-of-center pop deftly rounded-out Fleetwood Mac’s blues-based rock and gave the band its first number-one album in the U.S., Fleetwood Mac (1975). The exquisitely produced, air-conditioned pop-rock of such songs as “Monday Morning”, “Say You Love Me”, and, of course, “Rhiannon”, were emblematic of the mid-’70s Southern California music scene. Though the band would eventually sell 19 million copies of the follow-up, Rumours, (1977), Stevie Nicks was not happy.


Crystal Visions
(Reprise / Wea; US: 27 Mar 2007)
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As one-fifth of Fleetwood Mac, Nicks was limited to an average of three songs an album, which made her bewitching tales of gold dust women and birds in flight seem almost apocryphal. Though the striking balance of Nicks, Buckingham, and Christine McVie’s vastly different styles accounted for Fleetwood Mac’s blockbuster success, Nicks was undeterred in seeking another outlet for her songs. With the support of industry allies like Paul Fishkin and Danny Goldberg, she embarked on a solo career soon after Fleetwood Mac released Tusk in 1979.

Anyone who stepped foot in a record store in 1981 knows the cover image for Nicks’ first solo album, Bella Donna: The singer was draped in white chiffon, standing tall against a midnight blue background in her platform boots and crushed legwarmers with a parrot perched on her hand. In the foreground sat a crystal ball centered inside a tambourine beneath a trinity of long-stemmed white roses. The puzzling arrangement of objects seemed remnants of some sort of nocturnal ritual by which Nicks became a separate entity from Fleetwood Mac.

Fresh from recording with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Jimmy Iovine presided over the production for Bella Donna and infused Nicks’ songs with a streamlined rock edge. Petty contributed “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and former flame Don Henley lent his voice to “Leather and Lace”, a song Nicks had written several years earlier for Jessi Colter and Waylon Jennings. It was “Edge of Seventeen”, though, that best translated the dark and lovely visual cues of the cover image into music: Nicks looked like the “white-winged dove” she sang about, while Waddy Wachtel’s agitated guitar riff furiously flapped along with her strident voice. Like burnt honey, Nicks invoked an otherworldly growl at the song’s climax. Twenty-six years later, “Edge of Seventeen” remains the definitive Stevie Nicks song, full of elliptical lyrics and images of clouds, rain, and night birds. No wonder it opens and closes Crystal Visions.

Unfortunately, time has not been kind to the bulk of Stevie Nicks’s solo catalog, which is crucial to understanding the song selection on Crystal Visions. Without question, the bookends of her solo work, Bella Donna and Trouble in Shangri-La (2001), have fared the best. Both are made up of songs Nicks wrote long before they were recorded and were chosen from a larger library of songs to give the records a thematic unity. The Wild Heart (1983), Rock a Little (1985), The Other Side of the Mirror (1989), and Street Angel (1994), however, represent a decade-long decline in artistic and musical quality and are easy targets for Nicks’s detractors. As is well known, Nicks battled addictions to cocaine and prescription drugs throughout the ‘80s and early ‘90s. She was not in excellent form, writing songs that were clumsy and impenetrable while relying on the songs of others to score hits (e.g. “Talk to Me"). Tellingly, only a third of Crystal Visions is culled from those four albums, which mercifully obviates the task of hearing Nicks struggle.

The few gems from Nicks’s down period that made the cut for Crystal Visions are each accompanied by a music video on the DVD portion of the set. Nicks began making videos when MTV was still in its infancy and risible high-concept clips dominated the airwaves. Crystal Visions is a veritable encyclopedia of these. The most iconic of the bunch is “Stand Back”, a song from The Wild Heart that was structured after the chord pattern of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette”. The video is a dusky pastiche of early ‘80s MTV clichés, immortalized by Nicks strutting backwards on a slanted treadmill in platform boots. An army of background dancers poses and parades around a dimly lit set for most of the video and Nicks’s golden tresses are windswept as she earnestly lip-syncs in a lacy, low-cut blouse. Her trademark twirls are routinely caught in slow motion, emphasizing the wingspan of each shawl. Considering that Nicks’s only previous solo videos had been faux in-the-studio performances ("Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around"), “Stand Back” was revolutionary. Nearly 25 years later “Stand Back” is still one of Nicks’ most thrilling tracks. It’s also the only solo song of hers to be performed in a Fleetwood Mac set.



Stevie Nicks “Stand Back” - 1983 Appearence

And what about Fleetwood Mac? At best, the band tolerated Nicks’s decision to venture solo. Ever faithful, she rejoined Fleetwood Mac for the Mirage (1982) and Tango in the Night (1987) albums. ("Gypsy" and “Seven Wonders” were the Nicks-led singles, respectively.) But a contract dispute over her song “Silver Springs”, a Rumours-era B-side that she hoped to include on Timespace (1991), her first solo compilation, alienated her from the band anew. “Silver Springs”, which was directed towards Buckingham, was relegated to the B-side of Buckingham’s own kiss-off to Nicks, “Go Your Own Way”. (How many 45 singles have told two sides of an argument?) But when Fleetwood Mac reunited in 1997 for The Dance, a concert album and TV special, Nicks’ fury during “Silver Springs” stole the show.

Debuting at number one on the Billboard 200, The Dance brought Fleetwood Mac back into the public eye. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham could finally embrace onstage during “Landslide” and so the miraculously reunited band set out on an exhaustive tour. Thousands witnessed how Nicks, tambourine in hand, still had a captivating stage presence. Because a whole new generation of listeners was discovering Nicks, Enchanted (1998), a three-CD box set, was promptly assembled to give younger listeners a crash course in her solo career. A few years later, Trouble in Shangri-La, her solo comeback, was greeted with much fanfare.

With appearances by Sheryl Crow, Natalie Maines, Macy Gray, and Sarah McLachlan, Trouble in Shangri-La worked to ensure that Nicks appealed to a wide-range of music-buying demographics. Even without the contributions of other artists, though, the album stood as her best solo work since Bella Donna. Crow produced some of the tracks on the album, including “Sorcerer”, a song that dated back to the Buckingham Nicks era. “Planets of the Universe”, which was written in the late ‘70s, rocked in the same stormy seas as “Edge of Seventeen” with an agitated guitar riff bubbling underneath lines like “You’ll forget the chill of love / But not the strain”. For the first time in years, Nicks sounded focused and excited about singing on a record. (Say You Will, which was recorded with Fleetwood Mac in 2003, also featured some of Nicks’s most compelling latter-day singing and songwriting.)

Six years later, Crystal Visions summarizes the very best of Stevie Nicks’s oeuvre but it’s more than a collection of singles. It poignantly traces Nicks’s survival in rock and roll after nearly being destroyed by it. “Time makes you bolder / children get older / I’m getting older too”, Stevie Nicks sang 32 years ago on “Landslide” (Fleetwood Mac). A new recording of “Landslide” on Crystal Visions with the Melbourne Symphony intimates that not only is Stevie Nicks older but she’s triumphed after four tumultuous decades of “dreams unwinding”.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature...reams-unwound/

[Livia]

Stevie Nicks - Crystal Visions: The Very Best of Stevie Nicks
From Jason Shawhan

Guide Rating -

It doesn't have "Beauty and the Beast," which is a serious misstep. And I kind of miss "Sometimes It's a Bitch" on the audio disc, but it is present on the bonus DVD. And I still think that the best version of "Planets of the Universe" is the one done by Tracy Young and her mix staff. That's it for complaints. The audio disc has most all of the greats, including some of the Fleetwood Mac tracks that Stevie wrote (here presented in live versions, with the exception of the still-staggering "Silver Springs"). "Stand Back" and "If Anyone Falls" still sound fresh and invigorating, with the former remaining one of the finest Prince collaborations in music history. Dance fans will be pleased with the Deep Dish "Dreams" collaboration and her 80s club hit "I Can't Wait."

The reason why every human being worth their salt needs to get this compilation (and specifically the double-disc version) is the amazing videos. La Stevie has always had a very cinematic sensibility, and you can see that in her videos- each of which features an optional Stevie commentary track. You could almost say that the whole endeavor is worth it due to including both versions of the "Stand Back" video (the well-known performance video with dancers that we remember from MTV back in the day and the 'Scarlett' version that has Stevie on horseback on a plantation and really has to be seen to be metabolized), but there's so much more here. The live clip for "Edge of Seventeen" is just awesome, a testament to Nicks' continued viability as both diva and rock innovator.

http://dancemusic.about.com/od/revie...eNicksCrys.htm

[Livia]

http://dancemusic.about.com/od/revie...sCrys.htm?r=94

Stevie Nicks - Crystal Visions: The Best of Stevie Nicks
RepriseStevie Nicks - Crystal Visions: The Very Best of Stevie Nicks
From Jason Shawhan

Guide Rating - *****

It doesn't have "Beauty and the Beast," which is a serious misstep. And I kind of miss "Sometimes It's a Bitch" on the audio disc, but it is present on the bonus DVD. And I still think that the best version of "Planets of the Universe" is the one done by Tracy Young and her mix staff. That's it for complaints. The audio disc has most all of the greats, including some of the Fleetwood Mac tracks that Stevie wrote (here presented in live versions, with the exception of the still-staggering "Silver Springs"). "Stand Back" and "If Anyone Falls" still sound fresh and invigorating, with the former remaining one of the finest Prince collaborations in music history. Dance fans will be pleased with the Deep Dish "Dreams" collaboration and her 80s club hit "I Can't Wait."

The reason why every human being worth their salt needs to get this compilation (and specifically the double-disc version) is the amazing videos. La Stevie has always had a very cinematic sensibility, and you can see that in her videos- each of which features an optional Stevie commentary track. You could almost say that the whole endeavor is worth it due to including both versions of the "Stand Back" video (the well-known performance video with dancers that we remember from MTV back in the day and the 'Scarlett' version that has Stevie on horseback on a plantation and really has to be seen to be metabolized), but there's so much more here. The live clip for "Edge of Seventeen" is just awesome, a testament to Nicks' continued viability as both diva and rock innovator.


In addition to all of her videos, there's also some behind the scenes footage from the recording of the Bella Donna album that is just mind-blowing. All I can say is that no matter how into the riff of "Edge of Seventeen" you think you are, nothing compares to Stevie's response to hearing it in the studio. Stunning.

[Livia]

Stevie Nicks is a classic old rocker from way, way back and she has shared stages with big names such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Her cupboards and wardrobes are overflowing with the "Been There, Done That" T-shirts of the bands she has played with, the successes, the failures and the drugs. And yet, even though she is heading into Big Six Oh territory, she remains as vibrant and as full of rock ‘n roll as the first time she grabbed a mike.

This CD/DVD combo steams with Nicks at her most way out, very best — and it’s five star entertainment all the way.

The album collects 16 of her songs, moving through various moods with the likes of Tom Petty ('Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around'), Don Henley ('Leather and Lace'), two songs with The Melbourne Symphony, and her day job with Fleetwood Mac ('Silver Springs'). All are pure, unadulterated Nicks — like my favourite on this album, 'Rock ‘n Roll', which is a thumping live recording.

On the DVD she stars with Sheryl Crow, Petty and others and there’s plenty of her famous twirl that makes the fans go gaga. Mick Jagger has the pout, Elvis had the lips and the legs, Peter Townshend had the Windmill, and Nicks has her famous twirl.

She is a fabulous entertainer with so much energy you can almost feel it.

This is a fabulous combo, just a pity about the DVD quality which is patchy in parts, with both the sound and motion really bad in places. But, what the hell, it’s Stevie Nicks, so almost everything can be forgiven.

She still has a huge world-wide audience, in spite of the seamy side of her life, the bust-ups, the stints and departures with Fleetwood Mac, her ins and outs with the band Fritz, her long term cocaine addiction which was eventually cured by rehab in the '80s, and her rather spectacular failures (including the nude cover on her debut album).

But Stevie Nicks is a legend: a superb blend of Joplin, Crow, Baez and the female mirror of Dylan. Even if you only have just a few drops of traditional rock ‘n roll left in your blood, play 'Crystal Visions: The Very Best of Stevie Nicks' loud, over and over. And to hell with the neighbours!

http://entertainment.iafrica.com/mus...est/367748.htm