IYD Press Reviews & Discussion

[tabruns]

Originally Posted by BombaySapphire3

this from AZcentral

Stevie Nicks, 'In Your Dreams'

Rating: 3.5 stars




Stevie Nicks

(Reprise)

It's been 10 years since Stevie Nicks released an album, and she starts her new one with a song she wrote the same year Fleetwood Mac recorded "Rumours."But Nicks sounds surprisingly vital and engaged in the creative process here, especially on "Secret Love," a song she's had 35 years to record. Of course, it sounds exactly like the sort of thing she would have written then. Even Dave Stewart's production has a certain Lindsey Buckingham-esque sheen to it on that one. And the lyrics would have fit right in: "I am not asking forever from you/I'm just asking to be held for a while."

It's not the only highlight here.

"Italian Summer" is a lush romantic waltz with stately orchestration, recalling both the drama of Roy Orbison and the aching beauty of that Morning Benders single from last year that tried so hard to sound like they'd recorded it in 1961. And Nicks rushes the phrasing in all the right place on the chorus hook: "At the end of the Italian summer, It rains fast and it rains hard/The wind blows right through you/Tears you apart."

There are echoes of Stewart's past shading the techno-pop intro to the yearning "Everybody Loves You," whose chorus hook ends on a brilliantly Beatlesque chord change. Buckingham's harmonies on "Soldier's Angel," a dark, dramatic anti-war lament whose eerie atmosphere recalls "The Chain," are sure to conjure flashbacks to the '70s for Fleetwood Mac fans. There's also a definite Buckingham vibe to the rollicking California rockabilly of the title track, despite his lack of input on that song. And it's a shame she didn't get "Moonlight (A Vampire's Dream)" together in time to cash in on the "Twilight" craze.

Those "Twilight" kids would find plenty to love if they investigated Nicks' back pages.

- Ed Masley

Hmm. What's with the glowing reviews but then only 3.5 stars? Unless this one is a on a scale of 4 stars.

[tabruns]

Originally Posted by aleuzzi

http://www.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/Musi...s.review.roll/


It's the best RS review she's ever gotten. Period. 3.5 stars from RS is pretty damn good.

Agreed, but considering the text of the review it really should have been a 4 star rating. Nicks deserves it.

[fumidesigns]

Originally Posted by Richard B

It’s not just ‘In Your Dreams,’ Stevie Nicks is back
By: Tom Lanham 05/02/11 9:40 AM

By now, you’ve probably heard the — cough, cough — “Rumours.” And rest assured, they’re pretty accurate.

The most unexpected comeback of 2011 — indeed, in many a moon — is the sucker-punch return of ex-Fleetwood Mac faerie queen Stevie Nicks, with a rock-solid new seventh solo set, “In Your Dreams,” which hits stores tomorrow.

Recorded in her own home studio and shrewdly produced by Dave Stewart and Glen Ballard, the album features her longtime guitarist Waddy Wachtel, plus the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell and her two daughters, Sharon Celani and Lori Nicks.

It’s her first new material since the Grammy-nominated “Trouble In Shangri-La” a full decade ago.

And from the spooky-synth opener “Secret Love” (a track penned way back in 1976 about an unspecified celebrity beau), Nicks’ voice is as lissome and smoke-plumed as ever. She adeptly dips into country (“For What It’s Worth”), the “Twilight” phenomenon (the piano-based ballad “Moonlight (Vampire’s Dream)”), sparse-gravely blues (“Soldier’s Angel”) and, of course, her traditional gauzelike sound (the 5½ minute “Wide Sargasso Sea”). She even morphs Poe into pop, singing the verses of his forlorn “Annabel Lee.”

Nicks says the record is the first since “Rumours” where she’s felt so at home in a collaborative environment, which she attributes to Eurythmics mastermind Stewart. Naturally, tracking everything in her own house certainly helped, as well.

We happily doff our plumed fedora to this Rock and Roll Hall of Famer — welcome back!

http://www.sfexaminer.com/blogs/back...vie-nicks-back

i cant stop laughing! this should make her feel better!

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by SapphireSister

OMG in the midst of all this chaos it's fabulous to have a real, heart-felt belly laugh. I'm seriously DYING of laughter .

I'm not even sure how this mistake would even come about. Let's say Dave was talking about HIS daughters and they mixed it up. That's fine, but even though one of Dave's daughters was associated with the video, she wouldn't be listed as an album contributor.

I understand that the guy doesn't know Sharon and Lori, didn't have pictures and was probably reading off of some press release, but I don't even know where the word "daughters" would fall in the press release in order for him to get confused.


Michele

[Fiver]

Stevie Nicks' 'In Your Dreams' is her best solo work to date

Jim Farber

NYDailyNews.com

4/5 stars

Tuesday, May 3rd 2011, 4:00 AM

Stevie Nicks lives in a world of clues and innuendos. Her songs read like gossip items with the names cut out, tantalizing bits driven by hints rather than disclosures.

That's never been more true than on her first disk in a decade, on which she made sure to title the lead single "Secret Love," in case you miss her love of the salacious.

The song alludes to an affair Nicks had in the mid-'70s with a coupled man, a guy whose identity she has told journalists she can't quite recall.

Nicks follows that with a song ("For What It's Worth") that addresses another "great romance" with somebody famous on the sly. Later, in "Wide Sargasso Sea," a mysterious "Englishman" moves in with Nicks, but hates her West Coast lifestyle and, so, takes off, while in "Ghosts Are Gone" a shadow of an old lover keeps haunting her dreams.

It's a vintage Stevie move — a guessing game disguised as poetry. But, then, what else would you expect from a woman who rose to power in a band that turned their own romantic entanglements into something both marketable and mythic? In doing so, Fleetwood Mac functioned like a musical reality show, 30 years before its time.

Luckily, her exploitation of the strategy on "In Your Dreams" isn't the only intriguing thing about it.

"In Your Dreams" is the 62-year-old's best solo work since she began recording outside the band. Two elements deserve credit for this. First: producer and (whadyaknow?) old flame Dave Stewart. Long known for shoring up hooks and honing melodies, Stewart rates as Nicks' best sonic shaper since Lindsey Buckingham.

Equally crucial is Nicks' willingness to let others write key parts of the music. Mainly that means Stewart, though the most gripping track comes from Mike Campbell, of Heartbreakers fame.

His tune in "For What It's Worth" has as much elegiac ache as Nicks' best song ever, "Landslide." Her lyrics perfect the piece, with more poetic runs than her usual, including a unresolved, Dylanesque chorus that still gets its point across piercingly.

Stewart does nearly as well for her in "Italian Summer," a grand cabaret ballad unlike anything Nicks has sung before. Its tune couldn't be bigger, allowing it to both carry its rich orchestration and to enable the star to deliver a vocal with more range than even her most arch fans could have expected.

Some of Nicks' own tunes benefit from age. The title track dates back to 1976, when her muse was at its peak. Other songs provide winking tweaks on classic Mac tracks, from "Dreams" to "The Chain." The lyrical teases and allusions that come up along the way may add fascination to all that. But it's the melodies that make those tidbits sing.

http://tinyurl.com/6bsndx9

[Jondalar]

http://www.parcbench.com/2011/05/03/...her-best-ever/

Stevie Nicks’ ‘In Your Dreams’ — This Dream Album Might Just Be Her Best Ever
Written by Greg Victor in Music on 3 May 2011
Stevie Nicks – In Your Dreams
**** (out of 4 stars)
Label: Reprise Records

Here she is — the eternal chronicler of California canyon stream of consciousness sending out notes as if they were bubbles capable of bursting at any altitude, yet entirely capable of floating up to the heavens intact. I’m talking about the one and only Stevie Nicks, of course. In case you feel like treating your ears, your heart and your soul well — Stevie has released her new album, In Your Dreams. It’s one of those albums that comes along in a legend’s career — the milestone album that solidifies the reputation of a true artist forevermore. The queen of folk rock is in royal form. Long may she live and love and make songs to unpack the hidden meanings of it all.

In Your Dreams sounds like it could only have been an extraordinary experience to make. Co-producers Dave Stewart, Glenn Ballard and Stevie Nicks have created an album that attempts to do it all (that’s praise-worthy enough)… what’s more, they damn near succeed. It’s an album bursting with creativity. Yet it maintains its balance through a precise focus. These songs present Stevie as potent as ever without relying on any sort of gimmick. All that is asked of her is to be truer than ever in her delivery. Yeah, that’s all. And she is. It’s just this sort of relaxation within the parameters of tautness that brings out the best in most artists. And it must have been a fun album to make, what with Stevie Nicks writing and recording in her home studio. Writing and recording In Your Dreams must have been as close as it gets to what the experience was in the profound 1970s heyday of American rock.

[jellyman10]

^^^ It's just torture to be reading this kind of thing and knowing that she's laid up in bed, sick, instead of out there basking in it. I'm kind of close to bawling right now, actually.

Great review, though.

[Jondalar]

Originally Posted by jellyman10

^^^ It's just torture to be reading this kind of thing and knowing that she's laid up in bed, sick, instead of out there basking in it. I'm kind of close to bawling right now, actually.

Great review, though.

when Bella Donna became #1, her best friend died, par for the course

[vivfox]

Tuesday's Talk Shows
Los Angeles Times
Today Dick Van Dyke; “American Idol”; Stevie Nicks performs; Kristi Yamaguchi; Isaiah Washington. (N) 7 am KNBC Good Morning America Betty White; Rob Lowe; Donny Osmond; Jesse James. (N) 7 am KABC Live With Regis and Kelly Andy Samberg; ...

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/show...2011/05/t.html

[jellyman10]

Originally Posted by Jondalar

when Bella Donna became #1, her best friend died, par for the course

No, she found out Robin was terminally sick the same day that BD hit no. 1. She didn't die till more than a year later. But yes, she must be having horribly familiar mixed feelings today.

[BombaySapphire3]

By Ryan ReedStevie Nicks:
In Your Dreams[Reprise]



Paste Rating 5.0 respectable . Amid the fingerpicked folk of “For What It’s Worth,” the most nostalgic, romantic track from Stevie Nicks’ seventh studio album, America’s most beloved and mysterious gypsy princess emotes, “I got to sing; I got to dance; I got to be a part of the great romance.” No mystery there. As a former vocalist and songwriter for ’70s legends Fleetwood Mac, Nicks did experience the ups and the downs, the fame and the decline, the mysticism and the harsh reality of the rock star life.
No matter what she does, Nicks will never escape the large-looming legacy of her former band, the monster collective that cranked out masterpieces like Rumours and Tusk. Not that she’s avoiding the association—she did, after all, record with the band on their 2003 comeback, Say You Will, and participate in the sporadic tours that have taken place since. But she’s never quite reached her former act’s level of acclaim or commercial success, and she’s certainly never crafted that one album that’s come to define her as a solo artist. Her first attempt, 1981’s Bella Donna, has come closest on all counts, sprouting an array of top-notch singles (like “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and the oft-referenced “Edge of Seventeen”), but even still, most of her best moments as a soloist bear The Mac’s stylistic hallmarks.
Perhaps it should come as no shock then that the best track on In Your Dreams (her first album in a decade) sounds like a top-notch Rumours b-side. The dreamy, mystical “Annabel Lee” offers Nicks’ catchiest melody in years, her precise vocals pulsing over a sturdy, John McVie-esque bass and a Lindsey Buckingham-influenced guitar sweep. It’s when she strays from her former band’s trademark stamps that she comes across as awkward.
You have to give the woman props for her vocal legacy, and I would never want to even approach disrespecting the talents of such a legend, but Nicks’ voice is starting to sound more strained than stirring. Some of it boils down to poor arrangement decisions (lead single “Secret Love” should have been knocked down a couple keys), but part of the blame rests directly on Nicks’ shoulders, as she too often goes for that nasally witchy woman vibe that distracts from her naturally wonderful, smoky pipes. Her influence has never been more prominent than it is today (female indie-rock frontwomen like Beach House’s Victoria Legrand and Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner sound like they’ve worshipped many years at the altar of the Gold Dust Woman), but she’s never sounded less like herself.
In Your Dreams is an album about exorcising the demons of the past and moving forward toward the beauty lingering in our imaginations. Too often, the flat production and boring arrangements render Nicks’ powerful words moot. The title track is catchy and energetic, with big guitar strums crashing over a brisk country-rock churn, and “New Orleans” is a nice enough Mac-style ballad, climbing and descending through 12-string chords, fantasizing about dressing up in beads, feathers, and lace. But a more representative track is “Wide Sargasso Sea,” a corny, overcooked tale of fading beauty, tarnished lust, and backfiring arson.
“In the smoke and the fire, they never found her,” Nicks sings, surrounded by synth bleeps and blues-rock riffing. You could say the same thing of Nicks herself, who’s swallowed up in the cheesy, overdone theatrics. In fact, it sort of sounds like an epitaph for this album of wasted opportunity.
Related ContentOthers Tagged With:album review,
in your dreams,
stevie nicks

[Jondalar]

Originally Posted by BombaySapphire3

By Ryan ReedStevie Nicks:
In Your Dreams[Reprise]



Paste Rating 5.0 respectable . Amid the fingerpicked folk of “For What It’s Worth,” the most nostalgic, romantic track from Stevie Nicks’ seventh studio album, America’s most beloved and mysterious gypsy princess emotes, “I got to sing; I got to dance; I got to be a part of the great romance.” No mystery there. As a former vocalist and songwriter for ’70s legends Fleetwood Mac, Nicks did experience the ups and the downs, the fame and the decline, the mysticism and the harsh reality of the rock star life.
No matter what she does, Nicks will never escape the large-looming legacy of her former band, the monster collective that cranked out masterpieces like Rumours and Tusk. Not that she’s avoiding the association—she did, after all, record with the band on their 2003 comeback, Say You Will, and participate in the sporadic tours that have taken place since. But she’s never quite reached her former act’s level of acclaim or commercial success, and she’s certainly never crafted that one album that’s come to define her as a solo artist. Her first attempt, 1981’s Bella Donna, has come closest on all counts, sprouting an array of top-notch singles (like “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and the oft-referenced “Edge of Seventeen”), but even still, most of her best moments as a soloist bear The Mac’s stylistic hallmarks.
Perhaps it should come as no shock then that the best track on In Your Dreams (her first album in a decade) sounds like a top-notch Rumours b-side. The dreamy, mystical “Annabel Lee” offers Nicks’ catchiest melody in years, her precise vocals pulsing over a sturdy, John McVie-esque bass and a Lindsey Buckingham-influenced guitar sweep. It’s when she strays from her former band’s trademark stamps that she comes across as awkward.
You have to give the woman props for her vocal legacy, and I would never want to even approach disrespecting the talents of such a legend, but Nicks’ voice is starting to sound more strained than stirring. Some of it boils down to poor arrangement decisions (lead single “Secret Love” should have been knocked down a couple keys), but part of the blame rests directly on Nicks’ shoulders, as she too often goes for that nasally witchy woman vibe that distracts from her naturally wonderful, smoky pipes. Her influence has never been more prominent than it is today (female indie-rock frontwomen like Beach House’s Victoria Legrand and Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner sound like they’ve worshipped many years at the altar of the Gold Dust Woman), but she’s never sounded less like herself.
In Your Dreams is an album about exorcising the demons of the past and moving forward toward the beauty lingering in our imaginations. Too often, the flat production and boring arrangements render Nicks’ powerful words moot. The title track is catchy and energetic, with big guitar strums crashing over a brisk country-rock churn, and “New Orleans” is a nice enough Mac-style ballad, climbing and descending through 12-string chords, fantasizing about dressing up in beads, feathers, and lace. But a more representative track is “Wide Sargasso Sea,” a corny, overcooked tale of fading beauty, tarnished lust, and backfiring arson.
“In the smoke and the fire, they never found her,” Nicks sings, surrounded by synth bleeps and blues-rock riffing. You could say the same thing of Nicks herself, who’s swallowed up in the cheesy, overdone theatrics. In fact, it sort of sounds like an epitaph for this album of wasted opportunity.
Related ContentOthers Tagged With:album review,
in your dreams,
stevie nicks

Yeah I read this and he is not over Fleetwood Mac yet

[BombaySapphire3]

Stevie Nicks is, I’ve always thought, one of those ingredients that only tastes completely right in concert with other things. Those things being the rest of Fleetwood Mac in general — and, more specifically, Lindsey Buckingham.
Sure, she’s had her own hits, away from the band. And, at one point, Nicks had almost constructed a cottage industry out of duets with people who were, in fact, not Lindsey Buckingham — from Tom Petty to Kenny Loggins to Don Henley. Each of those projects has succeeded, to admittedly varying degrees, in attracting notice from the record-buying public.
But they never could mimic the recipe of finish-their-sentence symbiosis, not to mention revenge-screw sexual tension, found in her best work with Buckingham.
Same here, despite a gristly new attitude in the songwriting and the presence of the really very talented Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. In Your Dreams, the long-awaited follow-up to 2001′s Trouble in Shangri-La and first major work she’s done since Fleetwood Mac’s mid-2000s project, arrives on store shelves today. And despite the wait, it only serves to reteach this lesson.
Nicks brought along some old notes to her sessions with Stewart, and they co-wrote seven of the new disc’s 13 songs while recording at a house Nicks owns in Los Angeles. The results, to be fair, include a number of things that feel brand new, or at least like friends we haven’t seen in some time. This crunchy sexuality just bursts out of “Wide Sargasso Sea”; there’s a pissy little swirl of venom about “Ghosts Are Gone,” and a Beatle-ish orchestral sweep on “Italian Summer.” Most of it, too, finds her diving headlong into a choppy, thrillingly Dylanesque cadence, something that’s always sounded like a fight’s about to break out. Wait, a tough-talking Stevie Nicks? Utterly unexpected from a singer who for so long has crafted this faux-spook persona as a witchy woman.
Still, Nicks’ old band hangs like a cloud over the proceedings. Remember the part about the old notes? Two of the cuts on In Your Dreams, “Secret Love” and “Moonlight,” began as fragments during Fleetwood Mac’s triumphal mid-1970s period — and “Love,” the initial single, in particular, speaks to that soapy time in the group’s history, when friends became lovers who then became exes. (Mick Fleetwood, in a moment that’s almost too on the nose, appears in the video.) “Soldiers Angel” subsequently finds Nicks singing again with Lindsey, her original lover in the band.
So, while much has changed, not everything has. Nicks, it’s made clear over the course of the record, is no longer looking for something so sweeping as love ever after, just something that works. In pairing with Stewart — who provides some absorbing production touches, not to mention an oakenly barren duet vocal on “Cheaper than Free” — she’s found that. Yet, while the work with Stewart is interesting, something significantly more uncomplicated and thus more direct than the work either with Fleetwood or (in particular) Buckingham, that doesn’t make it better.

“Soldier's Angel,” where Nicks’ voice interwines once more with Buckingham’s, then is pushed along by the clarion crinkle of his guitar — like an angry, insistent banjo, if there is such a thing — well, it’s still the most remarkable thing here. For all of the years that have gone by since they first met, for all of the years that they have spent apart, for the many things they have done for and to one another, for all of things that shouldn’t still be there in their collaborations, there is simply nothing on In Your Dreams that matches the hard-eyed truths — and the very real mystery — of this song.
In my dreams? They’re at work right now on Buckingham Nicks II...Nick Deriso



this from "Something Else" website

[markolas]

The "she's better with Fleetwood Mac" people are never going to be satisfied with her solo albums. Personally, I prefer her solo projects to her work w/ the Mac. But the reviews that start off giving away the writer's bias toward FM in the first sentence aren't worth my time.

I don't pay much attention to music reviews. I've missed out on some great music in the past because I listened to music critics. No more. I'm perfectly capable of deciding what I like & what I don't on my own, without their help.

[Jondalar]

Originally Posted by BombaySapphire3

Stevie Nicks is, I’ve always thought, one of those ingredients that only tastes completely right in concert with other things. Those things being the rest of Fleetwood Mac in general — and, more specifically, Lindsey Buckingham.
Sure, she’s had her own hits, away from the band. And, at one point, Nicks had almost constructed a cottage industry out of duets with people who were, in fact, not Lindsey Buckingham — from Tom Petty to Kenny Loggins to Don Henley. Each of those projects has succeeded, to admittedly varying degrees, in attracting notice from the record-buying public.
But they never could mimic the recipe of finish-their-sentence symbiosis, not to mention revenge-screw sexual tension, found in her best work with Buckingham.
Same here, despite a gristly new attitude in the songwriting and the presence of the really very talented Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. In Your Dreams, the long-awaited follow-up to 2001′s Trouble in Shangri-La and first major work she’s done since Fleetwood Mac’s mid-2000s project, arrives on store shelves today. And despite the wait, it only serves to reteach this lesson.
Nicks brought along some old notes to her sessions with Stewart, and they co-wrote seven of the new disc’s 13 songs while recording at a house Nicks owns in Los Angeles. The results, to be fair, include a number of things that feel brand new, or at least like friends we haven’t seen in some time. This crunchy sexuality just bursts out of “Wide Sargasso Sea”; there’s a pissy little swirl of venom about “Ghosts Are Gone,” and a Beatle-ish orchestral sweep on “Italian Summer.” Most of it, too, finds her diving headlong into a choppy, thrillingly Dylanesque cadence, something that’s always sounded like a fight’s about to break out. Wait, a tough-talking Stevie Nicks? Utterly unexpected from a singer who for so long has crafted this faux-spook persona as a witchy woman.
Still, Nicks’ old band hangs like a cloud over the proceedings. Remember the part about the old notes? Two of the cuts on In Your Dreams, “Secret Love” and “Moonlight,” began as fragments during Fleetwood Mac’s triumphal mid-1970s period — and “Love,” the initial single, in particular, speaks to that soapy time in the group’s history, when friends became lovers who then became exes. (Mick Fleetwood, in a moment that’s almost too on the nose, appears in the video.) “Soldiers Angel” subsequently finds Nicks singing again with Lindsey, her original lover in the band.
So, while much has changed, not everything has. Nicks, it’s made clear over the course of the record, is no longer looking for something so sweeping as love ever after, just something that works. In pairing with Stewart — who provides some absorbing production touches, not to mention an oakenly barren duet vocal on “Cheaper than Free” — she’s found that. Yet, while the work with Stewart is interesting, something significantly more uncomplicated and thus more direct than the work either with Fleetwood or (in particular) Buckingham, that doesn’t make it better.

“Soldier's Angel,” where Nicks’ voice interwines once more with Buckingham’s, then is pushed along by the clarion crinkle of his guitar — like an angry, insistent banjo, if there is such a thing — well, it’s still the most remarkable thing here. For all of the years that have gone by since they first met, for all of the years that they have spent apart, for the many things they have done for and to one another, for all of things that shouldn’t still be there in their collaborations, there is simply nothing on In Your Dreams that matches the hard-eyed truths — and the very real mystery — of this song.
In my dreams? They’re at work right now on Buckingham Nicks II...Nick Deriso



this from "Something Else" website

this is someones personal site, how are they able to put up soldiers angel on their site