(Review) Stevie Nicks "In Your Dreams" 4 STARS "best solo work since she began recording outside Fleetwood Mac"

'In Your Dreams'
Stevie Nicks' 'In Your Dreams' is her best solo work to date
JIM FARBER
New York Daily News

Stevie Nicks lives in a world of clues and innuendos. Her songs read like gossip items with the names cut out, tantalizing bits driven by hints rather than disclosures.

That's never been more true than on her first disk in a decade, on which she made sure to title the lead single "Secret Love," in case you miss her love of the salacious.

The song alludes to an affair Nicks had in the mid-'70s with a coupled man, a guy whose identity she has told journalists she can't quite recall.

Nicks follows that with a song ("For What It's Worth") that addresses another "great romance" with somebody famous on the sly. Later, in "Wide Sargasso Sea," a mysterious "Englishman" moves in with Nicks, but hates her West Coast lifestyle and, so, takes off, while in "Ghosts Are Gone" a shadow of an old lover keeps haunting her dreams.

Snapshot of the New York Daily News Article

It's a vintage Stevie move — a guessing game disguised as poetry. But, then, what else would you expect from a woman who rose to power in a band that turned their own romantic entanglements into something both marketable and mythic? In doing so, Fleetwood Mac functioned like a musical reality show, 30 years before its time.

Luckily, her exploitation of the strategy on "In Your Dreams" isn't the only intriguing thing about it.

"In Your Dreams" is the 62-year-old's best solo work since she began recording outside the band. Two elements deserve credit for this. First: producer and (whadyaknow?) old flame Dave Stewart. Long known for shoring up hooks and honing melodies, Stewart rates as Nicks' best sonic shaper since Lindsey Buckingham.

Equally crucial is Nicks' willingness to let others write key parts of the music. Mainly that means Stewart, though the most gripping track comes from Mike Campbell, of Heartbreakers fame.

His tune in "For What It's Worth" has as much elegiac ache as Nicks' best song ever, "Landslide." Her lyrics perfect the piece, with more poetic runs than her usual, including a unresolved, Dylanesque chorus that still gets its point across piercingly.

Stewart does nearly as well for her in "Italian Summer," a grand cabaret ballad unlike anything Nicks has sung before. Its tune couldn't be bigger, allowing it to both carry its rich orchestration and to enable the star to deliver a vocal with more range than even her most arch fans could have expected.

Some of Nicks' own tunes benefit from age. The title track dates back to 1976, when her muse was at its peak. Other songs provide winking tweaks on classic Mac tracks, from "Dreams" to "The Chain." The lyrical teases and allusions that come up along the way may add fascination to all that. But it's the melodies that make those tidbits sing.