Tuesday, May 03, 2011

(Reviews) Stevie Nicks "might, shockingly and unexpectedly, be Nicks’s best album"

STEVIE NICKS: In Your Dreams (Warner Music) B-
The Vancouver Province - Ultra Sound

Fleetwood Mac’s beloved diva has always relied on a great producer to make her often pedestrian songs spring to life. Dave Stewart, who produced her first disc in 10 years with Glen Ballard, and wrote the music to some of its strongest tracks, might be no Lindsey Buckingham, but he’s been the midwife for what might, shockingly and unexpectedly, be Nicks’s best album. While some songs are expendable and most are simply too long, this is more consistently fun than we had any reason to expect.

STEVIE NICKS: In Your Dreams (Warner Music)
Calgary Herald — Mike Bell

It’s telling that there’s a song on the new Stevie Nicks album inspired by the new Moon film (yes, the film, not the book). Telling because it sets the tone for a dreary, ridiculously maudlin set of aC pap, the type aimed singularly at lonely, frumpy, single women in their mid’40s named Mallory, abigail or susan (but goes by “suze,” cuz it’s more fun!), who’ve given up on finding anyone or anything else to fill their lives. The material congeals into one amorphous blob of soft rock, and features every trite and obvious touchstone in the songwriter handbook, including: war, on the cringe-inducing soldier’s angel; epic tales of star-crossed love on wide sargossa sea (inspired, presumably, by the film, not the novel); and the now ubiquitous new orleans song, titled, quite imaginatively, new orleans. and the biggest crime is that, be it the original material or merely time, nicks no longer sounds like that vibrant gypsy singer of past days. she sounds like, well, like someone who gets inspired by Twilight films.

Smukt Stevie
Stevie Nicks. **** out of 6 Stars
Hvad: In Your Dreams,
producere: Dave Stewart og Glen Ballard.
Hvor: Reprise/Warner.
Denmark: Berlingske Tidende

Det er et vidunderligt genhør med en af rockhistoriens største kvindelige stemmer. Det er helt klassiske folk-sange, kærlighedsballader og grandiose rockschlagere. Sublimt produceret af Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart og Glen Ballard (Alanis Morissette). Og Stevie Nicks selv, for det er naturligvis om hende disse linjer roterer, lyder virkelig som den snart 63-årige levekvinde, hun er, med ridser, revner og buler. Det gælder både selve sangskrivningen og den vokal, man ikke har lyst til at leve uden. Bob Dylan vil elske denne plade, hendes gamle beau, Lindsey Buckingham, ligeså. Det er Nicks’ første soloskive i ti år, og hendes bedste siden de første solodrøn i startfirserne. Fremhæves må den gigantiske strygerbårne ballade »Italian Summer«, hvem der kan lytte til den uden at kny... Hvem der kan undgå at skære sig på »Soldier’s Angel« og synge med på den flyvske titelsang. Et herligt comeback.

(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.

(Review) Stevie Nicks – In Your Dreams **** (out of 4 stars)

Stevie Nicks’ ‘In Your Dreams’ 
This Dream Album Might Just Be Her Best Ever 
Written by Greg Victor
Parcbench.com

Here she is — the eternal chronicler of California canyon stream of consciousness sending out notes as if they were bubbles capable of bursting at any altitude, yet entirely capable of floating up to the heavens intact. I’m talking about the one and only Stevie Nicks, of course. In case you feel like treating your ears, your heart and your soul well — Stevie has released her new album, In Your Dreams. It’s one of those albums that comes along in a legend’s career — the milestone album that solidifies the reputation of a true artist forevermore. The queen of folk rock is in royal form. Long may she live and love and make songs to unpack the hidden meanings of it all.


In Your Dreams sounds like it could only have been an extraordinary experience to make. Co-producers Dave Stewart, Glenn Ballard and Stevie Nicks have created an album that attempts to do it all (that’s praise-worthy enough)… what’s more, they damn near succeed. It’s an album bursting with creativity. Yet it maintains its balance through a precise focus. These songs present Stevie as potent as ever without relying on any sort of gimmick. All that is asked of her is to be truer than ever in her delivery. Yeah, that’s all. And she is. It’s just this sort of relaxation within the parameters of tautness that brings out the best in most artists. And it must have been a fun album to make, what with Stevie Nicks writing and recording in her home studio. Writing and recording In Your Dreams must have been as close as it gets to what the experience was in the profound 1970s heyday of American rock.

At 62, the gold dust woman proves that there is legend after Fleetwood Mac. She has turned out the finest solo album of her four-decade career. If you love her unmistakable, ageless vocals and intricate storytelling, you will love this album.

Monday, May 02, 2011

(Fan Review) Stevie Nicks In Your Dreams "TRULY MASTERFUL RESULTS!"


Just picked it up (10 years later and 10 hours early) Whoa! This is a brilliant record, a real one, a Grower! The Lovely Stevie, Masterful Mr. Stewart and all involved...TRULY MASTERFUL RESULTS! This is a record you'll (keep on repeat) AND keep going...a timeless piece; impossible to absorb in just a few listens. AND People, DON'T LISTEN TO THIS ON the "EAR BUDS" >>>>>
MANDATORY!! FIRE UP on the HEADPHONES for "IN YOUR DREAMS."

Best,

Washed up 70's Warner Promo Rep from the Great White North, 'EH! 

Olie

(Review) Stevie Nicks ""Italian Summer" is a lush romantic waltz with stately orchestration"

'In Your Dreams' Rating: 3 half stars
(Reprise)
AZ Central
Ed Masley

It's been 10 years since Stevie Nicks released an album, and she starts her new one with a song she wrote the same year Fleetwood Mac recorded "Rumours."But Nicks sounds surprisingly vital and engaged in the creative process here, especially on "Secret Love," a song she's had 35 years to record. Of course, it sounds exactly like the sort of thing she would have written then. Even Dave Stewart's production has a certain Lindsey Buckingham-esque sheen to it on that one. And the lyrics would have fit right in: "I am not asking forever from you/I'm just asking to be held for a while."

It's not the only highlight here.

"Italian Summer" is a lush romantic waltz with stately orchestration, recalling both the drama of Roy Orbison and the aching beauty of that Morning Benders single from last year that tried so hard to sound like they'd recorded it in 1961. And Nicks rushes the phrasing in all the right place on the chorus hook: "At the end of the Italian summer, It rains fast and it rains hard/The wind blows right through you/Tears you apart."

There are echoes of Stewart's past shading the techno-pop intro to the yearning "Everybody Loves You," whose chorus hook ends on a brilliantly Beatlesque chord change. Buckingham's harmonies on "Soldier's Angel," a dark, dramatic anti-war lament whose eerie atmosphere recalls "The Chain," are sure to conjure flashbacks to the '70s for Fleetwood Mac fans. There's also a definite Buckingham vibe to the rollicking California rockabilly of the title track, despite his lack of input on that song. And it's a shame she didn't get "Moonlight (A Vampire's Dream)" together in time to cash in on the "Twilight" craze.

Those "Twilight" kids would find plenty to love if they investigated Nicks' back pages.

REVIEW Stevie Nicks "In Your Dreams".... "gorgeous, melodic romance-pop, creatively arranged"

Photo by Kristin Burns
* * * ½ DREAMY POP 
Stevie Nicks / Sound & Noise, In Your Dreams 

On her first solo album in a decade, the pop priestess delivers a lucky 13 tracks of torchy, tender and engaging tunes aimed at the heart of adult-contemporary radio. There are touches of country and soul, but mostly this is gorgeous, melodic romance-pop, creatively arranged. (Producer Dave Stewart co-wrote about half of the album.) Lyrically, Nicks plays it a bit too safe by leaning hard — again — on dreams/angels/ghosts imagery. The strongest songs are the more personal.

— Jerry Shriver
USA TODAY

Download: Everybody Loves You, Soldiers Angel