Which Album Should I Buy / SYW and DVD Questions

[louielouie2000]

Originally Posted by nicepace

I recommend you buy 'Mystery to Me' and 'In the Meantime' by Christine McVie.

I agree with that fully! Mystery To Me is absolutely the best quality Mac record. Each song is worth it's weight in gold, and can hold water on it's own. The album itself has more continuity and better flow than even Rumours Era Mac to me.

In The Meantime is much the same way... very high quality songs, one of the best Mac member's solo albums. The only Mac member's solo album that's in the same league quality wise is Lindsey's Gift Of Screws. For Christine anyway, there is some real envelope pushing material.

And Matt, I didn't discourage anyone from buying Behind The Mask . Much like Street Angel, it's kind of a mixed bag for me though. However, there are some truly great songs... Freedom and Save Me are amongst Stevie and Christine's strongest Mac career offerings in my opinion. I do like Billy and Rick's harmonies on songs like Hard Feelings and Do You Know. But overall they just never seemed to really assimilate into the band... on this album they simply feel spliced in. Their own material seems totally unrelated to the rest of the album, much like I'm a Roadrunner and The Derelict were out of place on Penguin. Stevie's offerings here are almost sad too... but how terrible they are kinda shows just how low she was when this album came out, and makes them great artistic expression to me. But truly, I wouldn't discourage anyone from buying this (or any other) album. I wouldn't necessarily recommend anyone buy it first... but it's definitely a chapter of Mac history that is very interesting, and must not be looked over.

In the end I can't say I DON'T recommend ANY Mac offering, from any Mac era, or from any of their solo members. I can't say I've ever really warmed up to Bare Trees, but still it's a link in the chain that every hardcore Mac fan should have, simply because it's another piece of the puzzle. And these are my rambling, unabridged thoughts lol.