My Amazon Reviews: Fleetwood Mac "Fleetwood Mac"

Dreams Unwind and Love's a State of Mind
4 Out of 5 Stars

The varying incarnations of Fleetwood Mac had been slowly gaining commercial ground in the USA over several albums, but few would have predicted the mammoth breakaway success of 1975's "Fleetwood Mac." The newcomers Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham provided an 'X Factor' the band sorely needed; Nicks being the ultimate space-woman front-person and Buckingham being a guitar craftsman/songsmith that gave the band's nucleus of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie (along with singer-pianist Christine McVie) a jolt of energy along with a congealed line-up.

The songs speak for themselves. There was Christine McVie's dreamy "Over My Head," her soulful "Say You Love Me" and Nicks' introduction to the world via "Rhiannon." The group had newly magical harmonies with the mixture on McVie and Nicks (as well as Buckingham's rubbery vocals) that made many of the songs pop-out like previous albums hadn't before. Nicks' personalty, as expressed in "Rhiannon" and the tender, country-ish ballad "Landslide," gave the band a new focal point, and Buckingham's oddball persona surfaces on the turgid "I'm So Afraid."

It seems like the eponymous nature of the album was by no means an accident. "Fleetwood Mac" was both reinvention and reinterpretation of the long-standing band's strengths with some new twists added. It shocked almost everyone by selling 5 million copies, and can you name another superstar album where the band is posed in a bathroom (as on this disc's back cover)? As unassuming as they may have seen it to be at the time, "Fleetwood Mac" marked a major turning point in America Music as the LA novices and UK vets spun a musical web that everyone (including former bandmate the late Bob Welch and associates like Walter "Magnet and Steel" Egan) wouldn't wait to capitalize on.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Stevie Nicks (Because We Share May 26th Birthdays!) "In Your Dreams"

Up to the edge of the night

4 Out Of 5 Stars

Stevie Nicks enters a new decade with an album that makes you wonder what took her so long; the cover drops Stevie from a crystal bubble, with a hazy white horse and the songstress entering from what looks like a location shoot from "Lord of The Rings." The picture teases you in a fashion that states, "You wanted a welsh witch? You got it." "In Your Dreams" delivers all the kind of music you'd expect from Stevie, even forty years since her rise to super-stardom.

Listening to "In Your Dreams" is a potent reminder of exactly how much Nicks' has influenced singers (not just women) for the past four decades. The nervous sense of drama, the urgency of all things mystical, the forcefulness of her femininity, these are all on display on this album. At the same time, I couldn't help but think of younger bands/singers. Everyone from Taylor Smith to Coldplay have copped some of Stevie's dramatic style for their own. Heck. there's even a vampire song her that she claims was inspired by watching "Twilight." Somewhere in England, Muse is rejoicing.

What makes "In Your Dreams" an album of the now is just how Stevie has kept to her own muse. Picking apart an Edgar Allan Poe poem ("Annabelle Lee") and recreating it as a song is pure Stevie, while name checking Anne Rice and having a spirit flit from woman to woman in "Soldier's Angel" (my favorite song on the album) takes to back to such classic albums as "Rumours" or "Bella Donna." Producer Dave Stewart even gets into the act by being Stevie's Don Henley on the closing song "Cheaper Than Free." Or, some might say, his Lee Hazelwood to Nicks' Nancy Sinatra. Either way you look at it (and you can add Lindsey Buckingham to the list of bargains on the album), "In Your Dreams" puts Stevie back into prominence.