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Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
Reviews: Lindsey Buckingham "Seeds We Sow" This follow-up is a more typical Buckingham
Seeds We Sow
There’s a reason Lindsey Buckingham is portrayed as the aloof-and-silent type on Saturday Night Live’s “What’s Up With That?”: In real life, he’s always seemed that way. Yet his songs with Fleetwood Mac—many of which he sang—remain some of the most heartrendingly intimate ever committed to mass consciousness. His solo work since Mac’s prime has been hit or miss, but 2008’s Gift Of Screws was a beautiful reminder of Buckingham’s bygone directness and warmth. His new album, Seeds We Sow, sees him shying away again. But not always in a bad way.
Seeds’ biggest barrier is one Buckingham has always shielded himself with: the studio. Otherwise stunning folk-rock gems such as “Stars Are Crazy” and the disc’s title track drown stark, naked folk in staccato reverb and air-conditioned acoustics. Often, though, Buckingham elicits gooseflesh for the right reasons. “Illumination” is a sharp, accusatory screed that vibrates like a Tusk outtake, and “In Our Own Time” wrings sorcery out of Buckingham’s signature finger-picked arpeggios and haunted swathes of harmony. But where Gift Of Screws showcased the unforced and immediate passion of his voice, even the best moments on Seeds feel as though they’re being heard through a stethoscope placed upon Buckingham’s chest.
One thing Buckingham has never forgotten, though, is how to construct albums with the consummate balance and gravity-defying magic of an architect. After laying a foundation of sprawling airiness and sumptuous overdubs, he tops Seeds with “She Smiled Sweetly,” a bittersweet, almost medieval-sounding love song that falters and quivers like collapsing lungs. And when he closes the track—and the album—with what might be the soft, breathy aftershock of a kiss, he once again cuts through all the effects and atmospherics to deliver a little raw piece of his heart.
By Jason Heller
A.V. Club
Lindsey Buckingham
Seeds We Sow (Mind Kit)
With 2008’s Gift of Screws, Lindsey Buckingham proved he could make a vintage Fleetwood Mac-sounding album all (largely) by himself. This follow-up is a more typical Buckingham solo set — meaning that the pop mastery is still here, but the overall feel is darker and more insular. He does seem in a more downcast mood than usual, whether that’s due to romantic troubles, advancing age, or the state of the nation (the foreboding “End of Time” alludes to all three). And the best moments here are indeed melancholy: “When She Comes Down” echoes the soaringly sad feel of Mac’s “Walk a Thin Line,” and the closing cover, “She Smiled Sweetly,” has a verge-of-tears vocal that makes it more affecting than the Rolling Stones’ original. With nobody else in the studio, Buckingham alternates stripped-down acoustic numbers with full-band facsimiles. That said, even the loudest songs here — like the topical “One Take,” which includes one of his most ferocious guitar solos ever — don’t detract from the album’s late-night, down-there mood.
BY BRETT MILANO
Sound and Vision
LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM Seeds We Sow That’s our Lindsey still going insane after all these years
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
By Chris Willman
TheWrap.COM
Review: Lindsey Buckingham "sparkling melody and superlative guitar work"
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 ★★★
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.
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