LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM Seeds We Sow That’s our Lindsey still going insane after all these years

Lindsey Buckingham Goes His Own Way, Again, With 'Seeds We Sow'

For someone who plays so well with others -- as attested to by tens of millions of records sold with Fleetwood Mac -- Lindsey Buckingham sure does create a hermetically sealed world when he makes his one-man-band solo albums.

“Seeds We Sow,” his latest, is another pipeline directly into his brilliant head, an echo chamber marked by equal parts obsessive neuroticism and dexterity. As always, it’s a fascinating place to visit, though if you dared to live there, you’d probably want to bring along a rhythm section, if not a chick singer.

This is the paradox of Buckingham: When he's with the Mac, you wish Stevie Nicks would do fewer songs so we could get more of his genius, but when he's by himself, you start to wish another human would show up, even if just for a cameo, to assure us we haven't been locked into his brain alone.

The trademark of his last few independently released solo efforts has been endlessly repeated, time-signature-avoidant acoustic guitar arpeggios, which inevitably sound like they’re being played by three sets of hands at once. These patterns are beautiful, but maddening after a spell -- “mad” perhaps being the operative word for a guy who titled an early signature project “Go Insane.”

When he deigns to do something resembling a pop song, your gratitude for the relief of a simplistic beat and sing-along chorus may know no bounds. That arrives in the form of, among other songs, “That’s the Way That Love Goes,” but don’t go looking for any lyrical comfort even there, amid the almost cheerful sounds. Sample lyric: “I lie alone and watch you sleep/I’d reach for you but I might weep/If you should tell me I must keep/Away.” 

That’s minor paranoia by Buckingham standards. “I can’t touch you anymore, it causes you harm,” he sings in “Stars Are Crazy.” The title track's seeds aren't blooming into anything too sweet, either: “Pretty things are dying, in the penny arcade of Edgar Allan Poe.”

Is there a tell-tale heart beating underneath all these bad vibes? Warmth does rear its ugly head in the gorgeous chorus of “When She Comes Down,” although it’s not at all clear who are what the imminent “she” in the tune is. Maybe it's death itself, since that’s the theme of “End of Time,” where Buckingham suggests, “When we get to the other side, maybe then we’ll make amends.” (Those are probably the words he dictates to the telegram operator every time he turns down another Fleetwood Mac reunion.)

Maybe he’s setting more commercial material aside in case he succumbs to another Mac attack, but more likely, this is the only muse he’s following nowadays. And it’s one worth following with him, if you’re a freak for brilliant acoustic guitar playing and the strange hooks Buckingham breaks them up with. But “Seeds We Sow” is deeply claustrophobic, so don’t go in without a lifeline to pull you back out.

“I’m just another madman/I turn it off, I turn it on,” he announces in “One Take," doing some role-playing but probably speaking for himself, too. That’s our Lindsey: still going insane after all these years.


By Chris Willman
TheWrap.COM

Review: Lindsey Buckingham "sparkling melody and superlative guitar work"

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM
Seeds We Sow
★★★★★★★★

Lindsey Buckingham has for so long been a part of the one of the biggest mainstream pop bands in the world - Fleetwood Mac, of course -  that we tend to forget what an oddball he can be. When the singer/guitarist makes solo records - formerly infrequently, but Seeds We Sow is his third in five years - he takes his cues from the experimental Tusk more than the mainstream blockbuster Rumours. Seeds runs on Buckingham's usual staples - sparkling melody and superlative guitar work, particularly hyperactive acoustics in this case - but it's the production that makes the record more than a soft rock side project. Looking back to the quirky arrangements of Out of the Cradle and the synthesized sheen of Go Insane, Buckingham takes often simple tunes and processes them into a strange mix of weirdness and clarity.

Review: Lindsey Buckingham Seeds We Sow ★★★

Lindsey Buckingham:
Seeds We Sow
Rating:  ★★★

In a year when longtime Fleetwood Mac mystic (and his former flame) Stevie Nicks released some of her worst songs to date (the underwhelming In Your Dreams), there’s something especially comforting about the ornate fingerpicking that opens Seeds We Sow, Lindsey Buckingham’s sixth solo album. “Had a dream that you reached for me in the night, touched me soft and slow,” he nearly whispers, his paper-light voice shrouded in homespun reverb. “Everything was wrong, but everything was right.”

It’s a moment of astounding, nostalgic beauty, alarming in its quiet and even more so in its blinding emotion. As great of a pop songsmith as Buckinghams’ always been, something even more mesmerizing always happens when he strips back the excess, trimming the mix to his acoustic and vocals. The album version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Big Love” now sounds dated and restrained; Buckingham’s now legendary solo performances of the track are transcendent, often featuring the singer screaming himself hoarse over his windmilled spirals of fingerpicked color.

Review: Lindsey Buckingham Seeds We Sow ★★★/5 Rollingstone Mag

Lindsey Buckingham
Seeds We Sow
Mind Kit
★★★/5

Lindsey Buckingham's 2008 Gift of Screws, assembled with some of his Fleetwood Mac compadres, was a shockingly good set from a dude who hardly needed to prove anything. This self-released and -produced LP is a true solo affair. The best moments - the title track, the Rumours-echoing "Rock Away Blind" - show a sweet guitar picker, a haunting high-tenor and an unmistakable melodic touch. But the recording suffers from thin, uneven sound and, on tracks like "Stars Are Crazy," a surfeit of muddling reverb. Sometimes a man needs to go it alone, but sometimes it's good to bring your buds.

By WILL HERMES
Rollingstone Magazine

Review: Lindsey Buckingham Seeds We Sow ★★★ 1/2 out of 4 Chicago Tribune

In the increasing down time between Fleetwood Mac tours and albums, Lindsey Buckingham has become unusually prolific as a solo artist, doubling his career output in the last five years by producing three albums. The latest, “Seeds We Sow” (Eagle Rock Entertainment), is essentially a one-man-band affair, with Buckingham donning his mad-scientist lab coat to orchestrate mood swings on voice, guitar and percussion.

Unencumbered by the commercial and ego demands in Mac, Buckingham affirms his talent for turning eccentricity into twisted pop songs. He tackles big themes: how time reveals consequences; the grudging arrival of enlightenment. He favors undulating guitars, voices woven into choirs, a shimmering sense of space. Not that he’s gone soft. Instead, he’s restless, anxious, as exemplified by the protagonist in “Stars Are Crazy” who awakens in the middle of the night to torture himself with questions he can’t answer.

The turbulence lurking just beneath the surface crashes through on “One Take,” a nasty song about a despicable character (A politician? A rock star?  Buckingham himself?) who’s “got a publicist who covers up the avarice.” The jumpy beat gives way to a lovely vocal interlude, only to have Buckingham shatter the fine china with a crazed guitar solo.

Buckingham has a knack for disrupting beauty, intruding on the serene. A deceptively hushed vocal brings “Seeds We Sow” to a seething finish. Tense guitar-playing and furtive percussion overtake “In Our Own Time.” And even as mortality closes in on “End of Time,” the narrator still can’t let go of the lies and hostility that wrecked a relationship.

A cover of the Rolling Stones’ “She Smiled Sweetly” makes for a particularly apt closer. The guitarist is a huge fan of the Stones’ mid-‘60s pop era, a time of gloriously jaded singles and social commentaries. He plays “She Smiled Sweetly” as a sparse, haunted, 3 a.m. reckoning, exhaling the lines as if he were expiring. “Don’t worry,” the song’s femme fatale advises as the narrator stresses out, his fate sealed.


Greg Kot - Music critic
Chicago Tribune

Review: Lindsey Buckingham "Seeds We Sow" ★★★ / 4 Stars USA Today

Lindsey Buckingham, Seeds We Sow
★★★ Stars out of 4

Buckingham has, happily, been recording at a steadier pace in recent years. Seeds is his third solo album since 2006 and, like its predecessors, is both intricate and supremely listenable. The Fleetwood Mac guitarist remains one of the most lyrical musicians around, fashioning arrangements that veer from gentle beauty to edgy effervescence. His melodies have a similar pungency.

— Elysa Gardner
USA Today

>>Download: One Take, End of Time

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM 'Seeds We Sow' ★★★★ 1/2 Stars / 5

Lindsey Buckingham 
Seeds We Sow 
(Mind Kit) 
★★★★ 1/2 Stars (out of 5)

It's a good year for the two pillars of Fleetwood Mac's best-known records.

Stevie Nicks, forever the group's most identifiable face in her space-cadet witch regalia, surprised skeptics in May with the unexpectedly solid In Your Dreams. Lindsey Buckingham, the real visionary behind the lush, sparkling Mac sound that once sold records into the platinum stratosphere, does not surprise us at all: with Seeds We Sow, he delivers yet another terrific collection of songs.

Buckingham's solo career has been a matter of one reliable gem after another, so there's always a danger of simply taking his modest little masterworks for granted. The multi-instrumentalist and gifted songwriter never returns to form because the standard has yet to slip.

Like his last two releases, Under the Skin (2006) and Gift of Screws (2008), the new disc - his sixth studio recording and first self-released effort - is defined by Buckingham's hyperactive acoustic fingerpicking and ultra-melodic hooks. The wonderfully familiar pattern is quickly established by the title track, which opens the album, and In Our Own Time, which follows it.

As usual, one of Buckingham's most intriguing quirks is that it's sometimes hard to lock into the groove of his songs: a chorus will come around and you're looking for the natural place to move your head with the rhythm. In Our Own Time and That's the Way That Love Goes are perfect examples. On the latter, the guitarist wails contentedly with two bare-bones electric solos.

Playing virtually all the instruments and doing his own producing and mixing, Buckingham manages to make an insular work sound far-reaching and timeless. Rockers like Illumination and One Take alternate with dreamier tracks like Gone Too Far, which is the most obvious Mac sound-alike on the disc, and When She Comes Down, which evokes the Irish folksong Wild Mountain Thyme as well as Brian Wilson's sunnier choral beds.

Once again, Buckingham raids the deep tracks in the Rolling Stones' mid-`60s catalogue. Having covered I Am Waiting on Under the Skin, he closes the new album with a haunting version of She Smiled Sweetly, surely one of the most tuneful beauties in the Mick Jagger and Keith Richards oeuvre.

If the recurring themes of betrayal and distance add a blue note to the proceedings, the music on this disc overflows with joy. Never take it for granted.

- Bernard Perusse

Montreal Gazette

Review: Lindsey Buckingham "This new album has moments of considerable beauty"

Whenever Lindsey Buckingham is apart from Fleetwood Mac, you worry that he’s going to drift into the ether. Buckingham needs the tension of Fleetwood Mac to bring out his best work. He can get too quirkily self-indulgent on his own, but this new solo album, “Seeds We Sow,’’ has moments of considerable beauty. His fingerpicked acoustic guitar once again shines, leading the way on the hypnotic title track and on such layered gems as the Nick Drake-influenced “Stars Are Crazy’’ and the edgy “End of Time.’’ His vocals throughout are often processed in a heavily reverbed manner. A few songs don’t work - “In Our Own Time’’ has some guitar fills resembling a buzzing gnat - but Buckingham’s sheer gift for melody wins out. The ballad “When She Comes Down’’ is a stately coup, while “One Take’’ is a political insight into this country’s dwindling middle class. Buckingham has made a hobbyist record to please himself, and he ends with a lovely, folk-flavored remake of the Rolling Stones’ “She Smiled Sweetly.’’ It’s almost a lullaby in his hands. 

AVAILABLE NOW on Amazon FULL ALBUM - MP3 Download $3.99

ESSENTIAL “When She Comes Down’’

Lindsey Buckingham performs at the Wilbur Theatre on Sept. 25.

Boston Globe

Review: Seeds We Sow "Buckingham takes an arty and often airy approach that harks back to “Tusk,” ★★★

Lindsey Buckingham
“Seeds We Sow”
self-released
★★★

Lindsey Buckingham’s sixth solo album starts with a shimmering guitar pattern that sounds similar to Fleetwood Mac’s “Never Going Back Again,” but rest assured no one will mistake this 11-song set for a Mac attack. As is his wont, Buckingham takes an arty and often airy approach that harks back to “Tusk,” with a dry ambience and plenty of sonic space. The politically tinged “One Take” rocks out in furious fashion, while “Illumination” and “That’s the Way Love Goes” are hooky pop gems. But it’s the emotive solo acoustic pieces such as “Stars Are Crazy,” “Rock Away Blind,” a hushed cover of the Rolling Stones’ “She Smiled Sweetly” and the title track that really bring these “Seeds” to fruition.

Gary Graff

The Oakland Press

Review: Lindsey Buckingham's 'Seeds We Sow'

Lindsey Buckingham's 'Seeds We Sow'

By STEVE KNOPPER. Special to Newsday

Starting with 1981's "Law and Order," Fleetwood Mac co-frontman Lindsey Buckingham has been writing, recording and producing great solo works -- it's just that they're starting to sound alike after all these years. As usual, "Seeds We Sow" has impeccable high vocals, beautiful guitar-playing alternating between angry and soothing, well-crafted songs and a heavy rhythmic quality; best song here is the outraged "One Take."

'Seeds We Sow'

GRADE B

BOTTOM LINE Another solid collection from the Fleetwood Mac singer in his spare time

Lindsey Buckingham, "Seeds We Sow" hermetically-sealed, satisfyingly odd album

“Seeds We Sow” feels like a hermetically-sealed, satisfyingly odd album

Last time I wrote about Buckingham and “Gift Of Screws”, my self-professed ignorance/suspicion of a lot of Fleetwood Mac drew a fair bit of approbrium from his more dedicated fans. Nevertheless, I’ll risk it again, because “Seeds We Sow” is another really interesting record.

Even more than that last album, “Seeds We Sow” feels like a hermetically-sealed, satisfyingly odd album, an absolutely driven pursuit of a singular artistic vision. On one level, “In Our Own Time” is a pretty orthodox rock song, but Buckingham smartly flaunts his home studio solipsism and his ProTools rig rather than faking a virtual band with it. The results are fractured and disorienting, with some unearthly, obsessive-compulsive guitar textures.

While there are certainly some beautiful, rippling reveries like the title track and “Stars Are Crazy”, which hark back to “Under The Skin”, many of the songs on “Seeds We Sow” sound – to a relative neophyte, remember – like they’d work pretty well for Fleetwood Mac. It’s the treatments - so micro-managed and fastidious; hyper-sharp and dreamy at the same time – that see Buckingham really asserting his independence. I like it, if that’s OK with his proper fans…

John Mulvey
Uncut Magazine

Uncut also dedicated a full page to Lindsey's new album in their October, 2011 issue - HERE

Lindsey Buckingham "Sense and Pop Sensibility + 24 Hrs Interview & Seeds We Sow Review ★★★★

Review: Lindsey Buckingham "Seeds We Sow " ★★★✩✩

Seeds We Sow (Eagle Rock)
The Daily Mail - UK
Sept 2, 2011

AS FLEETWOOD Mac gear up for another reunion in 2012, guitarist Buckingham’s solo renaissance continues apace. In contrast to his arena-pleasing day job, this homespun album has a maverick charm. There is an Arabic feel to his fretwork on In Our Own Time. That’s The Way Love Goes is a surging rocker, and She Smiled Sweetly is a faithful cover of an obscure Stones gem.

Lindsey Buckingham Seeds We Sow Review

Somethingelsereviews.com 
by: Nick DeRiso

"You keep waiting for Lindsey Buckingham, the old rebel, to soften into middle-aged acceptance, to conform. This isn’t that record. Credit Buckingham for never trading true emotion for sentiment. Seeds We Sow is as hard eyed as it is musically ambitious — beginning with its abruptly confessional album-opening title track."

Read the full review

Album Review: Lindsey Buckingham "Seeds We Sow" 4 (out of 5)

Lindsey Buckingham "Seeds We Sow" 

Buckingham gone to seed? Not a chance. Like its predecessors, the Mac daddy’s superb sixth solo CD is a DIY affair, with LB layering his precise needlepoint fingerpicking and high-whispery vocals atop beatboxes, sparse instrumentation and home-studio sonics. Add some sharp folk-rock cuts about karma and you’ve got the best album Mac didn’t make this year. What up wit dat?

Download: In Our Own Time; That’s the Way Love Goes

RATING: 4 (out of 5)

BY DARRYL STERDAN
QMI Agency (Canadian Press) 
syndicated across Canada in all major publications

ALBUM REVIEW - LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM: SEEDS WE SOW

The Mac maverick goes his own way, again. Lush and reflective... 

by Piers Martin
Uncut 

For almost four decades, on and off, Lindsey Buckingham has been the driving force behind one of the world’s biggest bands, Fleetwood Mac.

He is the charismatic architect of Rumours and Tusk, whose songs are familiar to millions, yet it’s often the case that many Mac nuts, particularly outside the US, would be hard-pushed to name one of the guitarist’s five solo albums, let alone pick a highlight from any of them.

That doubtless says more about the fairweather nature of the band’s conservative fanbase, though to his credit, Buckingham, one of the more gifted players of his generation, has never appeared to crave attention even though he’s spent his career in the spotlight. Cast as a maverick when he indulged various eccentric recording methods for 1979’s landmark Tusk, the tag has stuck.

As a solo artist, Buckingham is, at the age of 61, enjoying a fine run of form. Seeds We Sow is his third album in five years, following 2006’s Under The Skin and 2008’s Gift Of Screws, records which the Californian singer-songwriter discovered were welcomed by a new audience who’d been enchanted by Fleetwood Mac’s surprisingly harmonious 2003 reunion and tour after 16 years apart. Their comeback set, Say You Will, from that year, was solid enough, its best song a tumbling, guitar-speckled Buckingham number called “Red Rover”. In concert, too, his solo rendition of “Big Love” illustrated the range of his exquisite fretwork and power of his star-crossed vocal. Comparison with Stevie Nicks’ latest solo effort is unnecessary, so let’s just say Buckingham’s passion for his craft is obvious.