IYD Press Reviews & Discussion

[Livia]

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...r-2302773.html

The caprine warble of solo Steve Nicks has broken its silence after 10 years to explore the idea that nothing lasts forever, especially in affairs of the heart.

In her comeback single, "Secret Love" – originally written for the Rumours sessions in 1976 – Nicks touchingly pleads "I'm not asking for forever from you/ I just want to be held for a while". It's a theme she returns to again and again here. There are also typically romantic references to maidens, Camelot and kingdoms by the sea, and the supernatural looms large. The one bum note is "Cheaper Than Free", a slightly naff, lachrymose pedal-steel duet with producer Dave Stewart. Which is a shame, because Stewart's unfussy, country-flavoured production is the perfect backing for Stevie to do what she does best, namely bleat like a goat in heat.

[johnnystorms]

Originally Posted by Livia

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...r-2302773.html

The caprine warble of solo Steve Nicks has broken its silence after 10 years to explore the idea that nothing lasts forever, especially in affairs of the heart.

In her comeback single, "Secret Love" – originally written for the Rumours sessions in 1976 – Nicks touchingly pleads "I'm not asking for forever from you/ I just want to be held for a while". It's a theme she returns to again and again here. There are also typically romantic references to maidens, Camelot and kingdoms by the sea, and the supernatural looms large. The one bum note is "Cheaper Than Free", a slightly naff, lachrymose pedal-steel duet with producer Dave Stewart. Which is a shame, because Stewart's unfussy, country-flavoured production is the perfect backing for Stevie to do what she does best, namely bleat like a goat in heat.

a goat in heat??? pretty merciless!

[Artemis]

Originally Posted by Livia

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...r-2302773.html

The caprine warble of solo Steve Nicks has broken its silence after 10 years to explore the idea that nothing lasts forever, especially in affairs of the heart.

In her comeback single, "Secret Love" – originally written for the Rumours sessions in 1976 – Nicks touchingly pleads "I'm not asking for forever from you/ I just want to be held for a while". It's a theme she returns to again and again here. There are also typically romantic references to maidens, Camelot and kingdoms by the sea, and the supernatural looms large. The one bum note is "Cheaper Than Free", a slightly naff, lachrymose pedal-steel duet with producer Dave Stewart. Which is a shame, because Stewart's unfussy, country-flavoured production is the perfect backing for Stevie to do what she does best, namely bleat like a goat in heat.

Miaow. Kitty has claws. I'll never forgive South Park for starting off this whole goat thing. I guess it makes sense within the confines of Rock A Little, but not IYD.

[jellyman10]

Originally Posted by Artemis

I'll never forgive South Park for starting off this whole goat thing. I guess it makes sense within the confines of Rock A Little, but not IYD.

It's just bone idleness on the part of the writer, of whom we can ask: how much extra effort would it have taken you to make the point that despite the widely held caricature of Stevie-as-Goat, it is not very much in evidence here?

[windbecame]

actually, she was referred to as a goat years before south park ever came out. one instance for sure is a review for other side of the mirror. it's either in rolling stone or people magazine ...they say "her nanny goat with a head cold voice..while no one's textbook instrument conveys the passion of her language" (pretty sure that's verbatim) but i have always loved her vibrato!!!

[WildHearted]

Her voice was really getting "Goaty" in parts of The Wild Heart, and then it was in full effect for a lot of Rock a Little.

But I don't really mind it, to be honest. In fact, I think the husky vibrato was a lot more pleasant than the sharper and shriller stuff we started getting after (although Stevie's voice, now, is sounding pretty awesome actually). It had a weight and a warmth to it that was rough but could be downright beautiful.

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by WildHearted

Her voice was really getting "Goaty" in parts of The Wild Heart, and then it was in full effect for a lot of Rock a Little.

But I don't really mind it, to be honest. In fact, I think the husky vibrato was a lot more pleasant than the sharper and shriller stuff we started getting after (although Stevie's voice, now, is sounding pretty awesome actually).

I actually think her voice was the best during Wild Heart or maybe it was the fearless way she used it. Michele

[WildHearted]

Originally Posted by michelej1

I actually think her voice was the best during Wild Heart or maybe it was the fearless way she used it. Michele

Oh, I don't use 'goaty' in a negative sense haha. I just mean you could hear that the vibrato was starting to get more prominent and I guess looser in parts of some songs, such as the end of BATB. Her voice was extremely powerful and she did things with it on that album that, to be honest, amaze me.

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by WildHearted

Oh, I don't use 'goaty' in a negative sense haha.

No, I didn't think you did mean anything negative, judging from your screen name. I was just agreeing with you.

Michele

[darklinensuit]

I don't remember goat references in the RAL days, but I heard them a lot when TITN came out. That was also the year that one of the reviewers of her "Silent Night" said she sounded like Elmer Fudd, which also got a lot of mileage.

- Jake

[darklinensuit]

Originally Posted by Livia

to prove that her strange, iconic voice is everything it ever was, even at the age of 63.

Heaven knows I'm a fan, but I can only wish this were true.

- Jake

[Bandon]

Originally Posted by WildHearted

Her voice was really getting "Goaty" in parts of The Wild Heart, and then it was in full effect for a lot of Rock a Little.

But I don't really mind it, to be honest. In fact, I think the husky vibrato was a lot more pleasant than the sharper and shriller stuff we started getting after (although Stevie's voice, now, is sounding pretty awesome actually). It had a weight and a warmth to it that was rough but could be downright beautiful.

It you really want to hear her voice in full "goat" form, the best example was "Gypsy" during the 1982 Mirage Tour.

[michelej1]

The Music Fix
http://www.themusicfix.co.uk/content...vie-nicks.html

“I’m not asking forever from you…” sings Stevie Nicks on red-blooded opener ‘Secret Love’. And yet, on the evidence of this, her seventh solo album, that is exactly what she’s doing. A re-awakening of some magnitude, In Your Dreams, completed under the sage direction of one Dave Stewart, is her most invigorating sans-Mac work to date. It may not be as startling as certain other key re-inventions where trad rockers have sought left-field guidance to inject mainstream careers with a phial of street grade cred (Rick Rubin’s arm around the likes of Neil Diamond and The Dixie Chicks, for example) but Stewart is no fool and he buys into the Nicks mythology with guile. Nearly forty years since she and Lindsey Buckingham changed the shape, and the fortunes, of a British blues-rock band, the group’s most enigmatic member finally delivers an album worthy of her ever-idealised boho romaticism and the equal of the diamonds she’s studded into her band’s deeper legacy.

Because Nicks’s latest foray into the netherworld dreamscapes of her flighty imaginings comes after a decade of solo silence, it’s tempting to lower expectations. Is she bored? Is that next Mac re-grouping – next year, allegedly – too far off for the IRS ? Park the cynicism. In Your Dreams dispenses with much of the skirts-swirling, howling-at-the-moon imagery of her canon and replaces it with as solid a set of songs as she’s ever conjured. That Stewart is there to keep her wild furies on track is testament to the pairing and the absolute sense in the Eurythmics man taking his direction to her mansion-cum-studio. Out go the heavily programmed, synth-soaked radio beats, the haunted balladry; in their place, a nod to the AOR sensibilities that spawned the likes of ‘Sara’ and ‘Dreams’ and a pared down approach that delivers heavy hitters in the shape of ‘New Orleans’ and ‘Soldier’s Angel’. Buckingham appears on the latter, a tribute to the armed forces that skirts lazy hero worship, posits a close-up picture of love and (pointless) loss. The former, a tribute to a ruined city is bleak but over-brimming with the madness of hope.

Elsewhere, it’s the stock-in-trade that thrills, that epic faerie tale night vision that deposited the likes of ‘Edge of Seventeen’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’. Only absence from the planet would leave you wondering what Nicks has been reading to cause her to dream up the beguiling ‘Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream)’ but it sprinkles dark matter on the Nicks template and blends kinetics and mood. Similarly, ‘Italian Summer’ came after a trip to the Med that sent her senses spinning, and ‘Annabel Lee’, a re-telling of the Edgar Allen Poe poem sets course for the graveyard on the album’s heftiest hook. A rule of thumb here: the dafter the song title, the greater the reward. Stripped back simplicity gives the whirring, heaven-scent stuff a run, too. The driving title track plays tricks with elements of Dave Edmunds’ ‘Queen of Hearts’ and you’d need a heart of stone to stay strong in the face of the closing ‘Cheaper Than Free’, an acoustic duet with Stewart that rubber stamps four decades of growing up and trying to grow up smart (“What’s cheaper than free? / You and me…”)

Hey, they say she been around a bit. Hell, yeah. And she fascinates still, if only because the ribaldry of 70s rock ‘n’ roll abandon – the cocaine, the years on the road, the inter-band affairs – remain lit by a rare candour, whether that be in open heart interview or the songwriting for which she is, surely, slightly under-appreciated. It’s all too easy to return to her soul mate Buckingham’s oft-quoted regret that they ever even joined Fleetwood Mac, that they would have found themselves an audience regardless. On this form, finally harnessing the best of her wandering muse, in strange tandem with Buckingham’s most productive period since the 80s, who could argue?

Despite her protests, she remains irrevocably, unwittingly gothic in the truest sense, a proper mythical creature from near legendary times. She’s no more a witch than my mother-in-law but the spirit of ‘Rhiannon’ takes hold in this superb album’s deepest, darkest corners and invests in its smooth grooves an irresistible other-worldy sense of time and place. A decade since she last left band camp, and now a mere 63, her latest album stands as her best by some distance. A hefty, lengthy work that clocks in at over an hour, In Your Dreams is worth your time and your effort and, no doubt, your continuing love. It offers ample evidence that, even over 14 songs, Nicks lacks padding tracks.

[michelej1]

Indie London, by Jack Foley Rating: 4 out of 5
http://www.indielondon.co.uk/Music-R...in-your-dreams

STEVIE Nicks’ In Your Dreams is the singer’s first LP of new material for a decade and, for fans in particular, it’s well worth the wait.

Nicks’ distinct vocals retain the same power as her Fleetwood Mac days, while her song-writing demonstrates a wealth of ambition, taking in everything from New Orleans and Twilight tributes to tracks inspired by the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Edgar Allan Poe.

In doing so, she’s also amassed a strong army of supporting talent, including Mac band-mate Lindsey Buckingham, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell, long-term guitarist buddy Waddy Wachtel and Dave Stewart.

In truth, it’s debatable whether Nicks will win any new fans, such is the classic (and familiar) traits she brings to proceedings (there are moments this could pass for a Fleetwood Mac record). But given the length of time it has taken to emerge, In Your Dreams has to go down as a welcome comeback for the artist.

And there are plenty of highlights among the 14 tracks, starting with the opener, Secret Love, an oldie she wrote way back in ’76 and which could easily have ended up on a Fleetwood LP. It’s steeped in classic values… guitar backing, strong sense of melody, folk-rock tendencies and a notable chorus. And it gets things started in suitably assured fashion.

Nicks herself describes the LP as “a full blown rock ‘n’ roll album with some beautiful ballads’ but early on it’s more ballad driven. Secret Love isn’t really a rock song, while For What It’s Worth is a Dylan-esque folk ballad with country elements that showcases a tender side to the singer that’s welcome, but perhaps too early. It does, however, mark one of Campbell’s contributions.

Fortunately, that rock vibe drops with the rousing foot-stomper that is title track In Your Dreams, the sort of offering that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Petty record. It’s a real good time.

The ambition of her song-writing then becomes evident on Wild Sargasso Sea, a song that is based upon the novel of the same name that Jean Rhys wrote as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. It’s a brooding slow-burner that contains plenty of atmosphere and some cracking lyrics. And yes, it has to rate as another highlight.

New Orleans, like its name suggests, is a belated tribute to the spirit of that city and its ability to recover from everything thrown at it, while the piano backed Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream) is the Twilight homage – and it’s suitably cinematic and another ballad.

But while both songs are good, former fan favourite Annabel Lee emerges as the next real highlight, a tribute to Edgar Allan Poe that offers another classy throwback to Dreams-era Mac that lasts for six minutes and quotes Poe.

It’s a great, great rendition of a song that has long been available in various bootleg forms, especially given the orchestral touches Nicks also imbues into proceedings.

Another highlight, Soldier’s Angel, follows in a couple of songs time… a bluesy tribute to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center that deserves to stand alongside PJ Harvey’s The Hands That Maketh Murder as a great war record.

I wasn’t overly convinced by the sudden drift towards a synth sound (and a pop moment) on Everybody Loves You but fortunately Nicks chooses not to pursue that line and straight away comes back strong with the rousing guitar rocker Ghosts Are Gone, another highlight, and You May Be The One, which cleverly combines a bluegrass opening with a retro piano pop vibe and a great deal of romanticism.

Italian Summer, meanwhile, draws things to a close amid swirling strings and more romantic leanings, before Dave Stewart duets on the solid album closer Cheaper Than Free.

But if these final two songs don’t quite measure up to the highlight status of the album’s best work, then it’s still a supremely satisfying end to what is an undoubtedly well crafted comeback. Like we said, it’s been worth the wait.

[jellyman10]

^^^ Most of the UK reviews have been really good, haven't they? I think she is a lot of people's guilty pleasure and now they're all outing themselves like crazy!