REVIEW: "Seeds We Sow" Lindsey Buckingham "simple melody enriched by incredible instrumentals"

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM
Seeds We Sow
Whitney Tolar

Fleetwood Mac fans get excited – Lindsey Buckingham’s new album, “Seeds We Sow,” is now available for download and as a whole, it is definitely praiseworthy.

Even for generations too young to remember Buckingham’s pre-solo career, the album should resonate with anyone who appreciates a simple melody enriched by incredible instrumentals on the acoustic guitar.

The overall tone of the album is nostalgic and tranquil, yet one or two songs stray slightly from Buckingham’s characteristically understated sound into a louder, fast-paced style that has a more rock 'n roll feel, which is not necessarily pleasant.

“One Take,” for example, is out of place in the otherwise calming collection of songs, but this does not detract from the quality of the album as a whole.

A few especially great songs are  “Seeds We Sow” and “End of Time.”

The album’s title track, “Seeds We Sow,” offers beautiful, intricate instrumentals on the acoustic guitar, creating a calming sound reminiscent of classic Fleetwood Mac.

This song is definitely the standout of the album, featuring subdued yet powerful vocals and touching lyrics making for a catchy melody that is sure to get stuck in your head (in the best way possible).

While the vocals and lyrics are impressive throughout, Buckingham’s awe-inspiring expertise on the acoustic guitar is what truly makes the album exceptional, unique, and definitely worth a download.

For the most part, “Seeds We Sow” maintains a refreshing folk sound few artists can achieve as well as Buckingham.

Review: New York Times - "Seeds We Sow"

Lindsey Buckingham
Seeds We sow
By JON PARELES

When Lindsey Buckingham sings, “I woke up in the middle of the night/with you on my mind,” it’s hard to avoid thinking he means his many guitars, acoustic and electric. Throughout his solo album “Seeds We Sow” (Buckingham Records) his fingers fly, often in layers of fast, restless finger-picking that he clearly couldn’t wait to assemble. He played, produced and mostly wrote the songs all by himself, except for one songwriting collaboration and a version of the Rolling Stones’s “She Smiled Sweetly.” While Mr. Buckingham obviously selected every buzzing or pinging guitar tone carefully, the production has the low-fi informality of a demo. He maintains the sense of pop melody he brought to Fleetwood Mac, and he sings in an expressively frayed latter-day version of his old high tenor. His lyrics philosophize about love, loss and passing time. But his guitar geekery is the album’s governing force, and it’s usually for the better.

New York Times

Lindsey Buckingham Interview Ahead of Tour Opening Night

For Lindsey Buckingham, there is the Big Machine and there is the Small Machine.

The Big Machine is Fleetwood Mac, the band he’s played with since 1975 alongside Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and, until recently, Christine McVie. The Small machine is Buckingham’s solo work, which will be thrown into the spotlight when he performs Saturday night at John Ascuaga’s Nugget.

It’s a symbiotic relationship, Buckingham said last week in a phone interview from his Los Angeles home.

“What happens with a group like Fleetwood Mac, is that it is a brand,” Buckingham said. “There’s an axiom in business where you define the brand, find the formula and you exploit the brand; then you use up that formula until it is used up and you move on, which is a great business formula.”

But, he points out, “It isn’t really a very good formula for someone aspiring to be an artist in the long term.”

Which is where the solo work comes in.

“The solo work, because it’s inherently for a smaller audience, it does sort of tap into the left side of my musical palate, because there’s nothing commercial to uphold,” he said. “It’s been the solo work that’s allowed me to maintain my ideals and to let me aspire to be the artist.”

Bukingham’s Nugget concert is the first night of more than 30 shows across the United States in support of his most recent solo album, “Seeds We Sow.”

Full Interview at Reno-Metromix

Review Lindsey Buckingham "Seeds We Sow" sheer gorgeous pop genius, highly recommended

Lindsey Buckingham
Seeds We Sow
Guy.com by Jeb Delia

"Buckingham continues to amaze with not just the technical brilliance of his guitar playing, but the sheer variety of different tones and stylings"

It’s surprising how easily Buckingham seems to slide back into the retro mode when there’s a Fleetwood Mac tour on the horizon. Yeah, the money’s good, but I doubt he needs it, and the man we meet in his solo recordings seems so content with his new life (happily married, three kids), that it feels odd to see him retreat back into the role of “touring past glories” hitmaker. Fortunately, though, neither domestic bliss or the glow of nostalgia are blunting his considerable talents as composer, producer, and guitarist.

On his third album in five years, Buckingham handles not only the writing and producing, but plays nearly every instrument himself, and self-released Seeds We Sow through his own new label. Perhaps more than any of his peers, Buckingham continues to amaze with not just the technical brilliance of his guitar playing, but the sheer variety of different tones and stylings: “One Take” is busy and blistering, “In Our Own Time” glows with shimmering harmonies, and “Rock Away Blind” recalls his clean, epic fretwork on Mac classics like “Go Your Own Way.” And while it can be argued that his old band’s turbulent times caused him to dig deeper with his songwriting than he does today, he’s still able to inhabit a song like “Stars Are Crazy” or “That’s The Way Love Goes” as though he were still burning with the flames that stoked the sexual carousel that was Mac in its heyday. For sheer gorgeous pop genius, highly recommended.

Stevie Nicks > Collaboration Results in Refreshing 'Dreams'

NEW YORK — Stevie Nicks has her own way of doing things. And why shouldn’t she? The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer with five platinum albums to her name, not to mention all her work with Fleetwood Mac, has done pretty well for herself.

So when producer Dave Stewart, of Eurythmics fame, showed up at her house one day, guitar in hand, expecting to write a song with a woman who has written alone for decades, she was taken aback.

“He just said, ‘I like this poem. Let’s do this one,’ ” says Nicks, calling from her home in Los Angeles. “I’m thinking, ‘ OK, he doesn’t really think we’re going to write a song here in the room together.’ Then, he just started playing, and he said, ‘Chime in.’ And I’m like, ‘OK,’ and I start reading my poem, and pretty soon a melody started to happen, and in 20 minutes, ‘You May Be the One,’ which is a pretty serious song, was done.”

For Nicks, it was an epiphany. “I got it,” she says. “I understand why people write together who don’t have to write together. I understand Paul and John, and Rodgers and Hart, and Carole King and Gerry Goffin. … They didn’t need to write together. They could write just great on their own. So why did they? Well, now I know.”

Nicks says the sessions that became the album “In Your Dreams” (Reprise) were so good that she thought, “Oh, my God, I’m never gonna make a record this good again.

“This record is what we would call in San Francisco in the ’60s a ‘happening,’ ” she says. “Every part of it was so much fun. ... It had everything that I love. It had craziness, and we set up a very romantic setting. There were a lot of people here, and we had dinners every night, where we stopped and talked about the world. … We created a Parisian salon in the ’20s in my house. Friends came, and they asked if they could listen, and we said, ‘Sure, come on,’ because it was a very open thing. Everybody was welcome. It was a very easygoing, free-flowing musical thing.”

Lindsey Buckingham Talks Solo Work | Fleetwood Mac | Stevie Nicks

Photo by: Jeremy Cowart

Lindsey Buckingham talks solo work, Fleetwood Mac

Associated Press
By SANDY COHEN

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Though Fleetwood Mac rose to fame in the swinging 1970s, guitarist-singer Lindsey Buckingham says he's having the time of his life right now.

The 61-year-old musician is at a creative and personal peak, and one supports the other. He thanks his happy home life with wife Kristen and their three young children for enabling him to enjoy the recent reunion tour with Fleetwood Mac and to create some of his best work yet, which he released this week as his sixth solo album, "Seeds We Sow."

He took time out of his preparations for his upcoming national solo tour to talk about the new album, Fleetwood Mac and what the future might hold.

AP: What inspired this album?

Buckingham: It wasn't any one thing that inspired it. Normally there's kind of a calling. ... In the case of this one, Fleetwood Mac had just come off the road and I thought we'd do some more dates. There was no agenda to make an album, no agenda to express anything in particular, but the time opened up as a surprise, and I thought I guess I better fill it.

AP: Why do you say this may be some of your best musical work?

Buckingham: When I'm working with Fleetwood Mac, it's more like moviemaking. It's collaborative, and you have to bring in something like a full-on song, which would be like the analogy of the script. It's a more political process. When you work alone, it's more like painting. You go down to the studio and you've got this sort of one-on-one with the canvas. You've got the freedom of not necessarily having a full-on song. You can have a rough idea and you make a start. It's like a painter throwing colors on the canvas — at some point, they'll paint over some part but the work starts to take on a life of its own and lead you in a direction you might not have expected to go. There are many more surprises that happen when I'm doing solo work.