Monday, June 19, 2017

CD Review Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie "Red Sun lives in the same neighborhood as “Hold Me” does"

Review: Buckingham/McVie – Lindsey Buckingham . Christine McVie
By MARowe
Musictap.net

From the goofy, Animal House silliness that weaves in and out of the pop perfection of “Feel About You”, to the way that the opening number, “Sleeping Around the Corner” makes you smile when the band suddenly kicks in after a tortured vocal on the intro, Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie is almost everything that you could possibly want from a Fleetwood Mac album.

Which of course, it really isn’t. For a variety of reasons and speculation that you can find everywhere, Stevie Nicks sat this one out. Thankfully, in an odd parallel to her own beginnings, we get to stand back and discover her bandmates, Buckingham and McVie as a duo.

Full review at MusicTAP

"Your Hand I Will Never Let It Go" - Stevie Nicks

Your Hand I Will Never Let It Go

Not to be upstaged by the release of an album that all of her Fleetwood Mac bandmates contributed to except for her, Stevie Nicks has returned with her first solo song since 2014’s 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault. The track, “Your Hand I Will Never Let It Go,” comes from the soundtrack to the new dramatic film from Focus Features, The Book of Henry, which stars Naomi Watts and Sarah Silverman. The song was written by Thomas Bartlett (also known as Doveman) and (!) Ryan Miller from Guster. (Miller posted on Guster’s Facebook about the collaboration, which he called “ONE THE GREATEST EXPERIENCES OF MY LIFE”).

The sparse, constantly mutating ballad finds Nicks bridging country-tinged pop songwriting with some modern electronic production and New Age-y flourishes. Watch the lyric video and hear the song below.

Spin


 

Stevie Nicks' new ballad, "Your Hand I Will Never Let Go," will be featured in the Naomi Watts-led drama, The Book of Henry. The song was written by Thomas Barlett and Ryan Miller. 

"Drowned in thought and caught in a stare/ Talking to ghosts who were not there," Nicks sings plaintively. "Then you took my hand/ Transformation began/ Commotion where it once was still/ Fireworks explode/ Front row tickets to the show/ This hand I will never let it go."

Nicks also contributed vocals to Lana Del Rey's new Lust for Life track "Beautiful People, Beautiful Problems." In a recent interview, Del Rey confirmed she recruited the Fleetwood Mac singer for a last-minute collaboration.

"I kind of thought I had finished the record a couple times," said Del Rey. "One of those times, I felt I wanted a woman on the record, and I was talking to [Nowels] about who would be great to get on the record. We both could only come up with Stevie. Funny enough, he went to high school with Stevie and wrote his first hit with her."

Nicks recently appeared onstage with Harry Styles at that singer's small venue Los Angeles gig. 

Rollingstone

CD Review Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie "A worthwhile exercise"

Lindsey Buckingham / Christine McVie
Drowned in Sound
by Joe Goggins
6/10

There’s a couple of possibilities in play when it comes to the title of this collaborative LP from Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie. One is that they’re especially paranoid about the possibility of falling foul of the Trade Descriptions Act, and feared that a simple Buckingham-McVie moniker might have had fans storming record shops in their droves and demanding refunds after discovering that this isn’t, in fact, some kind of creative partnership between the House of Windsor and Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie, who by all accounts would rather be pursuing his love of sailing these days than touring the world in a famously tortured rock and roll band. The other line of reasoning, of course, is that comparisons with the highly-charged Buckingham-Nicks label would’ve been uncomfortable at best and an outright distraction at worst.

It’s exactly that line of thinking, though, that brings you to wonder what it is that Buckingham and McVie were looking to get out of this joint effort; after all, the former has always quietly served as his band’s musical director and the latter was, until recently, entirely off the radar, having effectively spent the best part of two decades as a recluse in the English countryside before finally rejoining Fleetwood Mac on the road. That said, the idea that their partnership was somehow less worthy of attention than that between Buckingham and Nicks is daft; after all, the last truly classic album that the band turned out, Tango in the Night, was built primarily around their songs, with McVie - who, of course, was a part of the setup before Buckingham - laying claim to the classics ‘Little Lies’ and ‘Everywhere’.

It’s worth mentioning that McVie’s ex-husband and Mick Fleetwood both chip in on this album, meaning it’s only a Nicks guest turn away from basically serving as the first new full-length from the group since 2003’s tepid Say You Will. Perhaps that’s the best prism through which to view it, especially given that the last recorded output we got from them as a whole was Extended Play in 2013, prior to McVie rejoining. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, absolutely rubbish. It also felt really regressive, a cynical jab at recapturing some idealised Fleetwood Mac sound, when of course that in its genuine form relies on a cornucopia of different ideas from different songwriters.

Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie comes quite close to it. Both sound pretty free; there’s plenty of experimentation, which is ultimately for both better and worse. ‘Feel About You’ is slight and would barely be there without the peculiar, Grease-esque backing vocals, and yet it’s an earworm. ‘In My World’ is the opposite, thickly layered and constantly shifting shape - it’s deliberate and considered, with the midsection recalling ‘Big Love’ with the vocal back-and-forth.

There’s inevitably missteps. ‘Too Far Gone’ goes all-out in its pursuit of disco and falls short on pretty much every front; the guitars have a weird, off-putting buzz to them, and both vocalists sound achingly uncomfortable, to the point that it’s astonishing that they listened back to it and were happy to put it on the record. Additionally, ‘On with the Show’ is a mid-tempo plodder that might conceivably have been intended for Fleetwood Mac, given that’s what their last world tour was called - it certainly wears the lethargy of Extended Play.

Flashes of vintage Mac remain, though, from both Buckingham and McVie. The latter takes the lead on what might be the standout, the gorgeous ‘Red Sun’, whilst ‘Lay Down for Free’ has Lindsey pulling that strange trick of sounding laid-back but emanating urgency on what should otherwise be a breezy, country-flecked rocker; it’s proof that all of his songwriting faculties are still intact. The fascinating thing is the overall sound of Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie and its production; it’s intriguingly low-key, especially given Buckingham’s appetite for lush textures in recent years. Accordingly, the album falls somewhere between curio and convincing; there’s enough here to hold the attention of the casual Mac fan, however fleetingly, but diehards should find a bit more to dig into in the brighter moments. A worthwhile exercise.

CD Review Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie


Otago Daily Times

Fleetwood Mac fans as well as casual passers-by will recognise these names. Yes, two-fifths of the rock colossus has headed to the studio and come up with a 10-song duo album that shows big choruses can almost (but not quite) cover up for occasional by-the-numbers clangers (Too Far Gone). 

Still, inviting drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie along for the ride has had its obvious benefits, allowing Buckingham to revel in his guitar technique, an assured hybrid of folk and country fingerstyle and distorted wig-out.

McVie brings the air and lightness of touch, her warm vocals a foil to Buckingham’s more gritty delivery (Red Sun and Lay Down For Free are classic Mac).

• Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie. Self-titled. Warner Music.
• Three stars (out of five)

Single download: Red Sun
For those who like: Elton John

— Shane Gilchrist

Lindsey Buckingham & Christine McVie on SiriusXM

SiriusXM’s Volume presented a Town Hall with Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie, hosted by Mark Goodman.   Buckingham and McVie, founding members of Fleetwood Mac, have a new album out together called, Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie.

During this SiriusXM Town Hall, Buckingham and McVie talk about the writing of their new album, Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie, taking a break from Fleetwood Mac, and the joys of working together.

Hear some of this Town Hall below.  The full hour-long SirusXM Volume Town Hall airs on Friday, June 16, at 7 PM ET on SiriusXM Volume channel 106.

BuckinghamMcVie.com