I usually spend my weekends catching up on the all the music released on Friday. Most weeks I find some good stuff. When I come across amazing stuff, you’ll read about it on Monday.
• Lindsey Buckingham – I don’t blame you if you haven’t devoted sufficient time to the long-running, daytime Emmy-winning, Fleetwood Mac soap opera to stay on top of the last couple of years. I haven’t either, really. The nutshell version goes something like this: Lindsey finished this album in 2018. The Mac was supposed to start its multi-year, multi-country 50th anniversary tour the same year. Lindsey jumps onboard, but lets the others know he’ll be scheduling the release and promotion of this album in between legs of the tour. The band (read: Stevie Nicks) has a fit and forces him out. He and Stevie spend a couple of days sniping in the press, pointing fingers at each other like a couple of kids standing in front of a crayon drawing on the living room wall when Mom arrives. Then Lindsey shrugs his shoulders and decides to give this record his full attention. Instead, he has a heart attack and open-heart surgery, which damages his vocal cords, then covid happens. After all that, we thankfully get his first true solo album since 2011.
And I mean solo record, there’s no pretense of this one sounding like he’s playing with a band. All the instruments, all the vocals - all Lindsey, playing with his home studio’s electronics and sound effects. Yeah, it sounds a little airless and “produced”, and my first instinct was to give it some serious shade because of that. But damn if the songs didn’t win me over in a big hurry.
Lindsey was the oddball, the eccentric, in Fleetwood Mac, playing the irresistibly catchy vinegar to Christine’s sugary vocals, and the jittery, bouncy stage presence to Stevie’s dusky mysterioso. He was also their most inventive and aggressive songwriter, and all the guitar licks that stuck in your head when the albums were over were his. At 72, he still has full command of that endearing or annoying (depending on who you ask) left-of-center pop sensibility. There are more hooks on Lindsey Buckingham than you’ll find at a pro bass fishing tournament, and it didn’t take long to realize that the production I was ready to diss is beautifully crafted and maddeningly catchy. Pure, 100% 21st century electronically produced pop sounds for sure, but agile and surprising. And, oh yeah, he can still play the hell out of a guitar.
There are a couple of tracks that fall into the sterility of the one-man-band self-production trap. “Power Down” shows up around halfway and is more about the sound than the song. It burbles and tinkles pleasantly all over the place, but it ends while you’re still waiting for the hook. The album ends with “Dancing”, different song, same problem, and really, really slow. But way more works than doesn’t. You get the irresistible “Blind Love”, which would have been a killer single on any Fleetwood Mac album and would be a hit single now if that path still existed for aging rockers. “Time” is an exquisitely catchy ballad, and “Santa Rosa” is just all kinds of perfect pop music, with a chorus crying out for Stevie on harmony vocals instead of more Lindsey. I had great fun with this one, and I’d easily recommend it to anybody who lost the thread on Fleetwood Mac’s long and convoluted career.
EARWORM: Lindsey Buckingham, “Santa Rosa” (2021)
Rumer, Live from Lafayette - Sarah Joyce is a chanteuse in the best sense of the word. Her voice is velvet-smooth and rich, kinda like a reincarnated Karen Carpenter, and her phrasing can tug at the ol’ heart strings with the likes of Peggy Lee, Dusty Springfield, and Adele. Born in Pakistan, raised in the UK, her first record as Rumer, 2010’s Seasons of My Soul, hit double platinum there while the US was busy ignoring it completely. After her second album, Boys Don’t Cry, she met Burt Bacharach’s musical director and moved to the U.S. to become his spouse. The couple now lives in rural Arkansas, her hubby’s neck of the (literal) woods.
Rumer discovered American country music in Arkansas, and especially the songs of Hugh Prestwood. Mr. Prestwood is a big deal in country music, but if you haven’t heard of him, it’s because he’s a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, he provides others with hit songs, not in anybody’s performer hall of fame. In 2020, she released Nashville Tears, an entire album of his songs and one of my absolute favorite records of last year.
Rumer and her husband, who is, of course, her musical director now, streamed a live concert in lieu of a covid-spreading tour for the record, with a full band, including string section. It’s pretty odd to listen to a live record with no crowd noise, but that’s a really minor quibble. The band, the singing, and the songs are all 100% satisfying. The only slight knock I’m gonna offer is that she didn’t include “The Song Remembers When” from Nashville Tears. She really should have asked me about that before the show. This is a late-night, put your feet up, adult beverage and deeply chill kind of record, and a damn fine one.
EARWORM: Rumer, “Fate of the Fireflies (live)” (2021)
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