Why Tusk is the "Perfect" Album

[secret love]

Originally Posted by bethelblues

That definitely makes sense! When songs are less familiar, they feel fresh and new and exciting. There's no need to press skip when a song comes up on your iTunes shuffle list. It surprises you and it's a gratifying listening experience.

Tusk has some great songs. Perhaps some of the best the band has done. I do think production hurt some in terms of accessibility. Lindsey could've probably had one or two more hits had his songs felt more complete...but that was clearly not what he was going for. I think Stevie's songs set her as one of the pre-eminent female singer-songwriters. Sara, Beautiful Child, and Storms are really special songs, devastating even. I wish the latter two were more known by the world and music critics. I'd be citing them as among her best songs and most essential. Sisters of the Moon was such a great rocker for the Tusk and Mirage tours, just an incredible live moment for Stevie and the band that again didn't pierce the popular consciousness like her other songs did, unfortunately. And Christine shows quite a lot of diversity on the album. The layering and production of "Brown Eyes"...my God! I remember thinking "Honey Hi" was just so short and stupid, but now it has completely absorbed me...I love the vocals and I love how they keep building to the end's "round." No, not every song works. I would point to the album's biggest problem being its pacing. Listening through the album in the car, for example, can be quite difficult, since there are so few upbeat songs. And slow ballads or slow songs don't give the overall listening much momentum and drive. Still, this is a very important album for the band and certainly gets close to The Beatles' White Album for its experimentation. I think The Beatles (and Led Zeppelin) did more with songs, where you'd have 3-5 enormous changes in rhythm and tempo that effectively made 3-5 songs in 1 song...but FM gives you more interesting vocals and personalities. If only the band would do more to draw attention to this album. Some songs here could only be described as sublime.

On the bolded point. Perhaps this is why Stevie dusted off Beautiful Child for the SYW 2003/2004 tour and Storms for the Unleashed 2009 tour. To give the songs a new audience. When she included Sisters of the Moon in last year's set list, I was so hopeful that Angel would be in the 2014/2015 set list. I'm sure some other fans must have noticed the same pattern I did, of a different Tusk album track from Stevie every consecutive tour since The Dance.

Oh well, we can keep our fingers crossed that Sisters of the Moon will be swapped out for Angel some time in 2015. Power of positive thinking!

Edited to add:
Yes, of course The Beatles did more with songs than Fleetwood Mac ever has. The mantra of this band, since Tusk, has been KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) - "guys, let's stick to what worked for us in 1977". That is why so many of their songs are classified by Billboard as Adult Contemporary. There is definitely a Fleetwood Mac formula.

Most songs Stevie writes have three different chords repeated through out. This is because she writes on piano and having never taken lessons, she doesn't know how to read a score nor does she know very many chords. The band tends to take Stevie's piano demos and keep the basic three chord structure but just add different instruments into the mix to make it interesting listening.

Christine McVie did receive piano lessons and as a result, of course her songs tend to have a more complex musical structure than Stevie's. Lindsey's songs again, are almost always more musically complex than Stevie's because he is a virtuoso guitarist. On a side note, It Takes Time would definitely benefit from Christine McVie either re-arranging or completing re-writing the piano music. It is a bit too dull for me.

I think what was missing from Say You Will was not Christine per se. What's missing to me is that more sophisticated musical structure she delivers in her compositions that just leaves Stevie's music-writing efforts for dead. We needed a bridge between Lindsey's amazing, boundary-pushing guitar work and the simple (but still impressive) music which Stevie composed. Christine's songs have always been more mainstream. Lindsey's work is more to the left and Stevie's is, sometimes, a little to the right. Her lyrics can sound forceful, bossy.