Gift of Screws Reviews

[michelej1]

[Lindsey's album was reviewed with Brian Wilson and Randy Newman's, on a side note, with Nick Reynolds' death, Revenge of the Budgie is getting a lot of attention in the obituaries]

Houston Chronicle, October 3, 2008

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...c/6038751.html

More than Wilson and certainly more than Newman, Buckingham had his time as an arena-rock guy. But inside Fleetwood Mac's chain he was always an unusual link. Buckingham, like Wilson -- and, for that matter, Newman -- was a con-trol-freak artiste rather than a singer-songwriter in a band. Further complicating his role as band guy were his avant-garde leanings.

Gift of Screws is Buckingham's most enjoyable mess since the Mac released Tusk. Just as Tusk should've been a Buckingham album, Gift of Screws, as presented, is different than how he imagined it years ago when he started the project. In between he kicked some songs over to Fleetwood Mac's middling Say You Will and some to 2006's largely acoustic Under the Skin.

In short, his original vision for Gift got screwed. But the salvaged project plays well.

The opener Great Day has nice moodiness and some superb guitar parts (including a prickly closing solo) before Buckingham gets really strange on Time Precious Time, with its rolling acoustic guitar and repetitive anti-chorus.

Elsewhere, Buckingham lets his freak flag fly, namely on the finger-picking workout Bel Air Rain. But several songs also sound a little Mac-ready. Did You Miss Me is the least interesting of them, with a predicable chorus and a beat that runs in place.

Love Runs Deeper, on the other hand, is a hammer of a pop single. The production is effective if a bit frustrating, throwing pre-chorus drums into your face with such thrust as to make your eyes water. Regardless, it's a chorus that sticks around long after the album has played out.

The Right Place to Fade is also Mac-ready, sounding a little like some unfinished business from Second Hand News. These two songs are interesting because both would've likely found radio time in the late '80s, when Fleetwood Mac could still be heard on modern rock radio. Those days are done, so you're going to need a satellite to intervene if you want to hear either on a car radio.

Maybe these three musicians have more differences than similarities. One has an Oscar. One's not yet 60. One's big on vocal arrangements, one's an impeccable lyricist, one plays a guitar like his shirt's on fire.

So what do the three have in common? Southern California, sure. None will have a radio hit from their latest record. All are interested in more than three chords and the truth.

And all three -- at their best, certainly -- suggest that you can leave physical vigor to those who prefer the treadmill. As for the creative stuff, good pop songs don't involve expiration dates.