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

AN EVENING WITH LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM - DUBLIN AND BELFAST CONCERT DATES CONFIRMED

Lindsey Buckingham has just confirmed two intimate Irish concert dates. An Evening With Lindsey Buckingham comes to the Olympia Theatre, Dublin on Thursday 15th December and The Waterfront, Belfast on Friday 16th December. Tickets for both concerts will go on sale this Friday 9th September at 9.00am.

Lindsey Buckingham has accomplished almost everything that can be done in rock 'n' roll, earning a spot in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame with Fleetwood Mac, winning countless awards, selling out venues around the world, and helping define the sound of rock for the last 3 decades. He's the predominant musical force behind such Mac albums as Rumours and the innovative Tusk, and has created a critically acclaimed body of solo work that yielded the hits, 'Trouble,' 'Go Insane,' and 'Holiday Road.

An Evening With Lindsey Buckingham

Olympia Theatre, Dublin - Thursday 15 December

The Waterfront, Belfast - Friday 16 December

Tickets On Sale Friday 9th September at 9.00am

A number of special VIP Packages will also be available for Dublin and Belfast and can be purchased via Ticketmaster. Details as follows:

MEET & GREET WITH SOUND 
* Exclusive Meet & Greet with Lindsey Buckingham before the show
* Attendance at the Sound Check
* Front row ticket to see Lindsey Buckingham live in concert
* Photo opportunity
* Signing opportunity
* Official tour programme
* Commemorative VIP laminate
* Event Manager in attendance

Lindsey Buckingham Meet & Greet with Sound Dublin €429.00

Lindsey Buckingham Meet & Greet with Sound Belfast £375.00

SOUND CHECK
* Exclusive opportunity to attend the Sound Check
* Ticket in the first three rows to see Lindsey Buckingham live in concert
* Official tour programme
* Commemorative VIP laminate
* Event Manager in attendance

Lindsey Buckingham Sound Check Dublin €259.00

Lindsey Buckingham Sound Check Belfast  £225.00

Artist | Date | Venue | Price | Tickets
Lindsey Buckingham Thu 15 Dec, 2011 Olympia Theatre, Dublin from €44.05
Lindsey Buckingham Fri 16 Dec, 2011 The Waterfront, Belfast from £35.00

Video: "Rhiannon" Stevie Nicks... Web Exclusive

Sunday Night - Australia

INTERVIEW: Lindsey Buckingham Feature in 7 Page Spread

October, 2011 Issue

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

Review: Lindsey Buckingham "Seeds We Sow" ★★★ Stars (out of 4) LA Times

Lindsey Buckingham
"Seeds We Sow"
(Mind Kit)
★★★ Stars (out of 4)

It’s been a good year for Fleetwood Mac, even without the actual existence of Fleetwood Mac, which last toured in 2009 and hasn’t released a new studio album since 2003’s "Say You Will." In May, the hit Fox series "Glee" devoted an episode to the band’s 1977 record "Rumours," the same day that singer Stevie Nicks released "In Your Dreams," her best-received solo disc in decades. And echoes of the group’s lustrous West Coast pop have cropped up recently on records by buzzy young acts like the Belle Brigade and Fleet Foxes. No wonder, then, that Lindsey Buckingham told Rolling Stone last week that Fleetwood Mac will likely return in 2012.

Until then, here’s Buckingham’s latest solo album, his third in five years and the first one he’s releasing himself following a lengthy stint with Warner Bros. Like all of the singer-guitarist’s own work, "Seeds We Sow" is thornier than Buckingham’s material for Fleetwood Mac, with an emphasis on his percussive, sometimes-discordant acoustic guitar playing and on his intimately recorded vocals, which in a stripped-down rendition of the Rolling Stones’ "She Smiled Sweetly" push intriguingly at whatever border separates passionate from creepy. (Buckingham’s originals reflect his usual blend of midlife introspection and limousine-liberal hand-wringing.)

Several cuts, though, suggest that the man who wrote "Second Hand News" and "Go Your Own Way" has indeed been thinking big of late: In "That’s the Way That Love Goes" he layers an insistent vocal melody over a zippy fuzz-pop groove, while "Gone Too Far" has the lush light-rock feel of Fleetwood Mac’s radio-bait late-’80s phase. Stand by to see what these "Seeds" grow.

- Mikael Wood

LA Times

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

IT HAPPENED: On This Day in 1981... Bella Donna Tops Billboard

Bella Donna is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter and Fleetwood Mac vocalist Stevie Nicks. Released on July 27, 1981, the album hit #1 on the U.S. Billboard charts dated September 5, 1981, remaining there for one week. Bella Donna was awarded Platinum status by the RIAA three months after its release on October 7, 1981, and has sold over 4 million copies in the U.S. and remains her best-selling solo album to date worldwide.

The album spawned four substantial hit singles during 1981 and 1982: the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers-penned duet "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" (#3), the Don Henley duet "Leather and Lace" (#6), the iconic "Edge of Seventeen" (#11), and country-tinged "After the Glitter Fades" (#32).

Bella Donna would mark the beginning of Nicks' trend of calling upon her many musician friends and connections to fully realize her sparse demo recordings. Along with friends Tom Petty and Don Henley, Nicks brought in famed session musician Waddy Wachtel, Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band pianist Roy Bittan, and Muscle Shoals session man Donald "Duck" Dunn of Booker T. & the MGs. Though Bella Donna's personnel list includes some 20 musicians, the album is very much Nicks' own work, with all but one of the songs on the record written by her.

The album also marked the first recording featuring Nicks' backing vocalists, Sharon Celani and Lori Perry, who still record and tour with Nicks today.

Wikipedia

NEW VIDEO: Lindsey Buckingham "In Our Own Time"

First single from "Seeds We Sow"
filmed before a live audience April 22, 2011 Beverly Hills, CA 
Featured on the Soon To Be Released:

"Songs From The Small Machine"

Live DVD/Blu-ray

In stores Oct 31st UK | Nov 1st North America

NEW ALBUM "Seeds We Sow" available TODAY ONLY 
on Amazon.com for $3.99 BUY NOW

Stevie Nicks' enchantment holds at PNC Bank Arts Center

By Tris McCall

Reviews: Stevie Nicks... Jones Beach x 2

Nicks delights in rare area solo stop

Stevie Nicks, in her first D.C.-area solo concert since the 2006 “Gold Dust Tour,” played Jiffy Lube (formerly Nissan) in a Live Nation-backed concert Saturday night that found the beguiling singer/songwriter lavishly showcasing her new album but also parsing her set list with plenty of hits to mostly keep everyone happy.