Your Thoughts Fleetwood Mac EP?

[David]

Originally Posted by michelej1

I think it’s possible to be a Lindsey fan and not appreciate all kinds of stuff, even Tusk. I happen to like Say You Will, but he’s done lots of things that I don’t “get” or I once got, but then got way over it. Luckily, he has given us a lot of variety to pick and choose from.

His variety is amazing. Even within a single album, you can jump from genre to genre, or from attitude to attitude (it's the real charm of Law and Order).

His music philosophy is also close to my heart: the way he's compelled to labor over every track with the firm conviction that even subtle variations in formal characteristics (like sonics or effects) make listeners feel different. There are other people like that in rock, but the mainstream rock approach is just the opposite: set up your equipment, power through something, and record it transparently. It's fine—that approach has its place in music. But there's also the equally valid Lindsey Buckingham approach. It's for him as much as for us. He learns something new about his own tendencies and skills when he spends weeks on the back-and-forth experimentation on a single track. "I like what I just did, but what if I try it this way, irrespective of what we ultimately plan to do with the track?" It's a critique of the more superficial, immediate method, where you don't spend days tweaking barely noticeable rhythm guitar lines or workstation effects because it isn't "cool."

Yes, there's stuff of his that sounds labored right off the bat, but some of Lindsey's most lasting work is the sort that sounds more superficial, yet reveals its thought complexities over time. We've mentioned a lot of those elements on the Ledge, like the reference to the old Max Steiner movie music in You Do or You Don't, or the way the motif of Stephanie is drawn out and used foundationally in Eyes of the World to support a track that's both boppy and desperate. We could have a million conversations about track choices and ideas in Lindsey's work, but imagine having even one such conversation about Stevie's. Stripped of her vocals and lyrics, those tracks would mean nothing to anyone.