Though recorded in Los Angeles with producer Ethan James, who's been central to Southern California's third-generation folk-rock scene, this Boston quartet's third record is its most austere work yet. Still, gloriously melodic songs like "Sleep on Flowers" from the band's debut EP or the first album's "Across the Sea" were clearly heir to the same folk-rock tradition that inspired post-blues Fleetwood Mac. If the Mac's sound is a California dream, Salem 66's is more of an Appalachian reverie. McVie writes silly love songs, the sentimental Nicks attracts cliche's like "the first cut is the deepest" the way some people attract stray dogs, and Buckingham's style is pointedly reductive (a verse like "She's so crazy/ She's so lazy/ Keeps you coming/ Keeps you running" is about as challenging as he gets).īut shallow lyrics are a minor - even appropriate - drawback for a record with this sort of gleaming veneer: The meaning of "Tango in the Night" is in how it sounds, not what it says.
SING HOLD ME FLEETWOOD MAC MAC
Still, the album holds together considerably better than "Tusk" or even "Mirage." Lyrically, Fleetwood Mac doesn't cut deep.
The title track seems to exist only so the guitarist can show that he can put heavy-metal guitar breaks into a Fleetwood Mac song, while his goofy bass harmony on "Family Man" proves annoying on repeated listenings. On some of the other songs, Buckingham scores production points that are minor indeed. "Seven Wonders," "Everywhere," "Caroline," "Little Lies" and "When I See You Again" - representing all three Mac singer/songwriters, Buckingham, Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks - are catchy, richly textured musical confections, ideal for pop radio.Īmid the soaring harmonies, even Nicks' croak sometimes sounds mellifluous (the fact that of the Macs she's had the most successful solo career can't be explained by the timbre of her voice). Unlike "Mirage," which had no real follow-up to the lilting "Hold Me," much of "Tango in the Night" seems custom-tailored for 45 rpm. Though Brits still outnumber Angelenos in Fleetwood Mac, "Tango in the Night" restores the band's status as a second-generation California classic. With its prominent synthesized percussion and breathy disco-style moans,"Big Love" is one of the record's sillier, lesser tracks.Įlsewhere on the record, however, Buckingham and longtime collaborator Richard Dashut have more successfully integrated the synth sounds with the folk-rock vocal style the Mac derived from the Beach Boys, the Byrds and the Mamas and the Papas.
The arranger/producer has bragged that "we certainly didn't embrace the more cliche'd aspects of the current recording technique," but "Big Love" doesn't support his case. The record's first single, Buckingham's "Big Love," is a bit misleading. WB 25471) is no "Rumours," but it is considerably stronger and more cohesive than the occasional quintet's last album, the 1982 "Mirage." Arranger and coproducer Lindsey Buckingham - the Mac's de facto leader since the experimental double record, "Tusk," which followed "Rumours" in 1979 - is in a more playful, eclectic mood than on "Mirage," but his gambits don't overpower the band's traditional strengths. The band's records were pretty, accessible and crisply produced, but they shared one goal of their punk contemporaries: to recapture the freshness of mid-'60s rock. During an age when the Top 40 airwaves seemed to have become a home for the chronically lame, Fleetwood scaled the charts with shimmering records - "Don't Stop," "Go Your Own Way" - that proved that pop could still be both commercial and exciting. Sales and chart position weren't the point to Christgau, but they weren't irrelevant either. That year, the English blues band turned California folk-rock group had released "Rumours," which yielded four hit singles and has sold nearly 20 million copies. The honor, he wrote, should have gone to Fleetwood Mac. When the Sex Pistols topped The Village Voice's 1977 rock critics' poll, that paper's then-music editor, punk partisan Robert Christgau, publicly demurred.
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