Mystery to Me: My Review

[SortaSavageLike]

I finally got around to posting this on epinions.com earlier today. Epinions is a "pay-per-hit" website so I thought I'd be nice and post it here verbatim. I also wanted to make sure I didn't make any horrible mistakes that need correcting (epinions lets the user update his/her reviews after they've been posted). A lot of it seems redundant, but I am writing for a general audience.

Pros
Interesting combination of alternately funky, bluesy, laid back, mystical, sarcastic, and psychedelic 70s pop-rock.

Cons
A couple of the songs are definately "filler."

The Bottom Line
If you've been weaned on the Rumours lineup, it's a good start on the band's back catalog. A fun listen, just be ready for some dated elements.

First of all, I’d like to apologize to everyone who read my reviews of Tusk and The Very Best Of Fleetwood Mac and got the impression that Fleetwood Mac was purely a hardcore blues outfit before 1975. Mystery To Me is very much an unpretentious pop album, even more so, in my opinion, than Rumours. And John McVie hasn’t been "always drunk" since 1987. Sorry.

So I’m back… to the epic dysfunction. Back to the band… that I love. Ah, but a completely different incarnation of that band! Here’s a list of this album’s personnel:

Mick Fleetwood (Drums, Percussion)
John McVie ("I play bass.")
Christine McVie (Keyboards, Vocals)
Bob Welch (Guitars, Vocals)
Bon Weston (Lead Guitar, Slide)
Richard Hewson (String Arrangements)
Produced By Simon Birch & Fleetwood Mac

If you’re a fan of the band’s recent lineup, the first three names should be recognizable. Mick Fleetwood & John McVie are the only two permanent members, having managed to hold this mess together for 38 years. Christine "Don’t Stop Saying You’ll Make Holding Me Fun" McVie joined in 1969 and stayed on until 1995, though she rejoined for the 1997 Dance tour. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were busy finding new ways to cook Hamburger Helper at the time of this album’s release.

Bob Welch, former guitarist for the R&B group Ivory Hudson and the Harlequins, joined the band in 1971 shortly after the loss of both Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer. Welch worked on five albums from 1971 to 1974, leaving late that year due to marital stress and creative drain. Many more ‘learned’ fans consider Mystery To Me, his third album, to be his best work. His voice is smooth and warm, almost ethereal at times. Despite his somewhat oddball California hippy personality, he seems very much in control of himself here.

Lead Guitarist Bob Weston’s stint with Fleetwood Mac was much shorter, amounting to only two albums, this and Penguin. He was fired in October 1973 after it was learned he was having an affair with Mick Fleetwood’s wife, Jenny. What a shame; it sounds like he was having the time of his life on this album! Members of Fleetwood Mac sleeping around? Jeeze, I thought those were just rumours! (Okay, last time I mention that album)

Track Listing
Emerald Eyes 3:37
Believe Me 4:06
Just Crazy Love 3:22
Hypnotized 4:48
Forever 4:04
Keep On Going 4:04
The City 3:35
Miles Away 3:47
Somebody 5:00
The Way I Feel 2:46
For Your Love 3:44
Why 4:56

Highlights (I’m sorry, but sometimes I just can’t resist song lyrics!)

Emerald Eyes (Welch) Mystery to Me opens strong with this laid-back, atmospheric, enigmatic "title track". Welch walks a thin line between the mystical and the silly with this song, but manages to stay closer to the former throughout the album. The intermittent, thunderclap-like drum beat is punctuated by Christine McVie’s fine background vocals and a subtle electric guitar.
Emerald eyes is a mystery
She's my place of serenity
And gettin' back to the way I feel
Her honest word is my only real thing.

Believe Me (C. McVie) I’m listening to this, hearing this twinkly piano opening, and I’m thinking, "is this Songbird, Version Zero?" And Bam! Thirty seconds in, it explodes into this spastic "everybody together now!" jamboree that doesn’t let up for two minutes. Definitely a "spiritual predecessor" to songs like Say You Love Me and Hold Me. Sure, the lyrics speak pessimistically about her crumbling marriage with John McVie, but sometimes you just couldn’t get this woman down!

Hypnotized (Welch) This drawn own, distant-sounding homage to flying saucers and the paranormal is an FM-radio favorite to this day, proof to the uninitiated that Fleetwood Mac existed before 1975:
They say there's a place down in Mexico
Where a man can fly over mountains and hills
And he don't need an airplane or some kind of engine
And he never will…
An eerie song that still leaves people scratching their heads. Mick’s drumming could literally put someone in a trance, while Christine’s quiet intonation of "they got me… hypnotizeeeed…still creeps me out.

The City (Welch) I actually like this song, despite the bizarre production quality and Welch's noticeably hoarser vocals. It seems cobbled together, as if the band members weren’t "together", and recorded their disparate elements separately. New Yorkers won’t be happy with the anti-ode lyrics (There’s something wrong with New York/ It’s like a prison without walls/ No I won’t go back there/ I just don’t like that place at all!), but it still works in an off-kilter sort of way.

Miles Away (Welch) My favorite song on MTM? Maybe. Starts out slow, but quickly launches into a long jam session intertwining both electric and acoustic guitars. The bass line is fantastic (I almost never say that about John!) and Welch spits out daffy lyrics ("Don Juan goes up in a cloud of smoke/ And all those Hare Krishnas turned out to be a joke…) like he just doesn’t care. Gah, I can’t stop tapping my toes!

Somebody (Welch) I could trash this one for its plodding repetitiveness. But I won’t - it’s just so wonderfully hypnotic for five minutes straight. I wouldn’t call Somebody a "rocker", per se, but it’s full of great hooks and a steady drum beat that’ll become ingrained in your mind.

The Way I Feel (C. McVie) It’s pretty. There, I said it. It’s hard to describe it any other way; it’s just a pleasant little piano ‘n acoustic guitar song that strikes me as special. The lyrics are a bit corny, but the instrumental work makes up for it.

Why (C. McVie) I wasn’t sure what to make of this one at first. Fleetwood Mac with a string section? Well, as long as the USC marching band kept their hands off it… But I listened closer, and it really is and amazing song. It manages to be sad (but not horribly so), hopeful, sweeping and subtle all at once. Once it all came together, I got chills down my spine listening to it.
You make me feel, I just can't carry on
But I know I won't always be that way
'Cos my heart will rise up with the morning sun
And the hurt I feel will simply melt away
You don't have to give up
Why is it all wrong?
Why don't you love me?
Why won't you just be strong?

And the Rest….

I liked Believe Me, but Just Crazy Love (C. McVie) is a bit "filler"-ish. A fun song, but the poodle-skirt nostalgia of it rubs me the wrong way. And having two bouncy pop songs back-to-back screams "overkill!" Forever (Welch, Weston, J. McVie) on the other hand, is way too laid back and spacey for my taste, and sounds like a drugged-out 70s easy-listening tune.

Keep on Going (Welch, vocals by C. McVie) suffers from a dated bass/string arrangement in its first half, but picks up nicely in the second with an interesting Spanish guitar solo. For Your Love (G. Gouldman) is a somewhat disposable cover of a 1965 Yardbirds song, post-psychedelic in tone and devoid of FM’s trademark "sound". Harmless, but still filler and a bad choice for a single.

In Conclusion
Mystery to Me was released in the United Kingdom in early 1973. At that time Fleetwood Mac had undergone a number of rather sudden personnel changes, doubtless alienating a sizable chunk of their fanbase. While the blues influence is still their, it seems the band began drifting into poppier, more upbeat territory at the time. Not that I have anything against good pop music, but "The Mac" had already distanced themselves from their blues roots years before the arrival of Lindsey & Stevie.

MTM was certified gold in December 1976, peaking at #67 on the US charts, no doubt helped by the media attention the new lineup was receiving. Many fans feel that this is one of, if not the most under-rated album they made. This being my first real excursion into "old school" (a misnomer, I known) Mac, I don’t know whether to agree or not. Either way, Mystery to Me should appeal to anyone who’s more familiar with the Buckingham/Nicks lineup. It’s not particularly deep, it’s not rebellious, and it’s about as gritty as chocolate pudding. But it is a fun listen, despite some rather quaint filler songs.

(And a big "Thank You!" to everyone at The Ledge (http://ledge.fleetwoodmac.net) for recommending this album to me!)

Recommended
Yes

Great Music to Play While: Reading or Studying