Fleetwood - Magick!

Fleetwood - takes me back to the sixties on this one!

"Say You Will," CD only proves that wine does get better with age. Fleetwood Mac keeps getting better, just when I thought they couldn't. They topped themselves on this one! Lindsey's voice is hauntingly beautiful, and Stevie's voice is like no other. Brilliant musicians, every one of them - John, Mick, Lindsey & Stevie. Christine, where are you? If you love Fleetwood - buy this CD and the DVD Destiny Rules! One more thing - "Murrow Turning Over In His Grave" is spellbinding! Long Live Fleetwood Mac!

Say You Will- Lindseys BEST Work EVER

Oohhh boy, the first time i heard this cd... i stuck to tracks that i had heard such as "bleed to love her" from the dance, as well as "Peacekeeper" and "Say You Will" which i had seen the videos for. The CD has definitely grown on me much in a years time, and man am i realizing how great of a CD this is. It showcases Lindseys finest work, even better than Tusk. My favorite songs of his on the CD are "Bleed" "Say Goodbye" and "Steal Your Heart Away". Other great ones by L.B. are "Miranda" "Murrow" and "Red Rover" plus ALL OF THEM!! As a matter of fact, the only track that i didnt care for is "Silver Girl" but that is IT!!! This CD is still in my constantly played list and will remain. Even Minus Mcvie, this is a great CD

When love starts out in the darkness

Fleetwood Mac is a band filled with lineup changes from the very beginning. The longest-term affair in the band was was known as the 'Rumours lineup'.



So before listening to this album, one has to note that this is not the 'Rumours lineup'. For the first time in almost thirty-four years, Christine McVie is not present. And that's a huge change. The notorious english keyboardist/singer/songwriter, with her charming compositions, was a key part of what made this band make a peaceful transition from hardcore blues, passing through different stages of rock and pop, to the straightforward and exteremely successful adult oriented rock act they were in the late 70's and through the 80's. Of course the sound that defined Fleetwood Mac during those years of success was also constructed by the talents of guitarist/singer/songwriter/producer Lindsey Buckingham and singer/songwriter Stevie Nicks, but it was really the mix of those three extremely different personalities which made classic albums such as Rumours or Tusk be that succesful.



So an album like Say You Will, which does not have that mix, cannot be reviewed with the same criterium that, say, Mirage would have. Even though this still IS Fleetwood Mac (any incarnation of the band with Mick Fleetwood on drums and John McVie on bass is Fleetwood Mac since they own the name - and this includes the much maligned Time lineup). This time the mix of the obscure and 'enchanted' Nicks songwriting, and the pop experiments of Buckingham is very attractive, but different to what we've heard before.



This was originally Buckingham's album, and you can note it, since his songs shine the most when it comes to review track by track. "Say Goodbye" is easily his best song in years, meticulously arranged by almost classical acoustic guitar parts and featuring poignant lyrics about lost love. "Steal Your Heart Away" is almost the ultimate pop anthem, a very McVie-sounding track which by the way features McVie's collaboration on background vocals. Those would be his two highlights, having also other very good songs ("Miranda", "Peacekeeper", "Red Rover", another chance to enjoy Buckingham's masterful and vastly underrated guitar playing) and a pleasant commentary about the world's current situation ("What's The World Coming To") in his favour. The production varies from good to great in these tracks, but it just goes too over the top in "Come" (weird lead vocals) and most of all "Murrow" (an army of lead guitars in the end). You'd just wish to hear the real thing, which is something that only happens when you hear "Come" live, when the song just comes to real life. On this album it almost sounds out of place.



Stevie's tunes are carefully arranged to fit in here. Thus the electro-acoustic sound of Lindsey's guitar follow the songs as they develop with their magic lyrics. Some very fine lyrical work by Nicks is heard here (most notably "Thrown Down", "Everybody Finds Out" and "Destiny Rules"), and she rescues two of her most precious demos of the past with fairly different results ("Smile At You" is almost ruined by the bass-percussion-high lead vocal arrangement, and "Goodbye Baby" is favored by the melancholic piano and the moving lead vocal, making it one of the best songs on the album). But she also manages to deliver her worst Fleetwood Mac song to date ("Silver Girl", featuring memorable lines as "she was a girly girl"), and another song which had excellent intentions, but not really well done, in my opinion ("Illume 9-11").



The title track is almost an attempt to have that Christine sound that the record misses. (And this does not mean that this is a bad album because McVie is not there). It is a very good collection of individual songs, with some low points here and there - which can always happen if you release an album with 18 songs in it, with attempts to create a more or less homogeneous sound which work in excellent ways at times.



Perhaps this actually *sounds* as two separate solo albums (mostly because of the awful running order, which can anyway be changed by programming your stereo the way you want it to sound), only partially joined by the production. But the fact that most of these 'solo' songs are actually excellent, and that, at least from Buckingham's side, it's one of the very best collection of songs he's released in years (Stevie did have a great deliver with her 2001 album Trouble In Shangri-La), makes enough for a great listening time. The chemistry between those two, which began "when love started out in the darkness" creates a tension which can easily be felt in some of the more poignant tracks on the album. And the huge music voyeurs in us always like that.