From the goofy, Animal House silliness that weaves in and out of the pop perfection of “Feel About You”, to the way that the opening number, “Sleeping Around the Corner” makes you smile when the band suddenly kicks in after a tortured vocal on the intro, Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie is almost everything that you could possibly want from a Fleetwood Mac album.
Which of course, it really isn’t. For a variety of reasons and speculation that you can find everywhere, Stevie Nicks sat this one out. Thankfully, in an odd parallel to her own beginnings, we get to stand back and discover her bandmates, Buckingham and McVie as a duo.
Not to be upstaged by the release of an album that all of her Fleetwood Mac bandmates contributed to except for her, Stevie Nicks has returned with her first solo song since 2014’s 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault. The track, “Your Hand I Will Never Let It Go,” comes from the soundtrack to the new dramatic film from Focus Features, The Book of Henry, which stars Naomi Watts and Sarah Silverman. The song was written by Thomas Bartlett (also known as Doveman) and (!) Ryan Miller from Guster. (Miller posted on Guster’s Facebook about the collaboration, which he called “ONE THE GREATEST EXPERIENCES OF MY LIFE”).
The sparse, constantly mutating ballad finds Nicks bridging country-tinged pop songwriting with some modern electronic production and New Age-y flourishes. Watch the lyric video and hear the song below.
Stevie Nicks' new ballad, "Your Hand I Will Never Let Go," will be featured in the Naomi Watts-led drama, The Book of Henry. The song was written by Thomas Barlett and Ryan Miller.
"Drowned in thought and caught in a stare/ Talking to ghosts who were not there," Nicks sings plaintively. "Then you took my hand/ Transformation began/ Commotion where it once was still/ Fireworks explode/ Front row tickets to the show/ This hand I will never let it go."
Nicks also contributed vocals to Lana Del Rey's new Lust for Life track "Beautiful People, Beautiful Problems." In a recent interview, Del Rey confirmed she recruited the Fleetwood Mac singer for a last-minute collaboration.
"I kind of thought I had finished the record a couple times," said Del Rey. "One of those times, I felt I wanted a woman on the record, and I was talking to [Nowels] about who would be great to get on the record. We both could only come up with Stevie. Funny enough, he went to high school with Stevie and wrote his first hit with her."
Nicks recently appeared onstage with Harry Styles at that singer's small venue Los Angeles gig.
Lindsey Buckingham / Christine McVie Drowned in Sound
by Joe Goggins
6/10
There’s a couple of possibilities in play when it comes to the title of this collaborative LP from Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie. One is that they’re especially paranoid about the possibility of falling foul of the Trade Descriptions Act, and feared that a simple Buckingham-McVie moniker might have had fans storming record shops in their droves and demanding refunds after discovering that this isn’t, in fact, some kind of creative partnership between the House of Windsor and Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie, who by all accounts would rather be pursuing his love of sailing these days than touring the world in a famously tortured rock and roll band. The other line of reasoning, of course, is that comparisons with the highly-charged Buckingham-Nicks label would’ve been uncomfortable at best and an outright distraction at worst.
It’s exactly that line of thinking, though, that brings you to wonder what it is that Buckingham and McVie were looking to get out of this joint effort; after all, the former has always quietly served as his band’s musical director and the latter was, until recently, entirely off the radar, having effectively spent the best part of two decades as a recluse in the English countryside before finally rejoining Fleetwood Mac on the road. That said, the idea that their partnership was somehow less worthy of attention than that between Buckingham and Nicks is daft; after all, the last truly classic album that the band turned out, Tango in the Night, was built primarily around their songs, with McVie - who, of course, was a part of the setup before Buckingham - laying claim to the classics ‘Little Lies’ and ‘Everywhere’.
It’s worth mentioning that McVie’s ex-husband and Mick Fleetwood both chip in on this album, meaning it’s only a Nicks guest turn away from basically serving as the first new full-length from the group since 2003’s tepid Say You Will. Perhaps that’s the best prism through which to view it, especially given that the last recorded output we got from them as a whole was Extended Play in 2013, prior to McVie rejoining. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, absolutely rubbish. It also felt really regressive, a cynical jab at recapturing some idealised Fleetwood Mac sound, when of course that in its genuine form relies on a cornucopia of different ideas from different songwriters.
Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie comes quite close to it. Both sound pretty free; there’s plenty of experimentation, which is ultimately for both better and worse. ‘Feel About You’ is slight and would barely be there without the peculiar, Grease-esque backing vocals, and yet it’s an earworm. ‘In My World’ is the opposite, thickly layered and constantly shifting shape - it’s deliberate and considered, with the midsection recalling ‘Big Love’ with the vocal back-and-forth.
There’s inevitably missteps. ‘Too Far Gone’ goes all-out in its pursuit of disco and falls short on pretty much every front; the guitars have a weird, off-putting buzz to them, and both vocalists sound achingly uncomfortable, to the point that it’s astonishing that they listened back to it and were happy to put it on the record. Additionally, ‘On with the Show’ is a mid-tempo plodder that might conceivably have been intended for Fleetwood Mac, given that’s what their last world tour was called - it certainly wears the lethargy of Extended Play.
Flashes of vintage Mac remain, though, from both Buckingham and McVie. The latter takes the lead on what might be the standout, the gorgeous ‘Red Sun’, whilst ‘Lay Down for Free’ has Lindsey pulling that strange trick of sounding laid-back but emanating urgency on what should otherwise be a breezy, country-flecked rocker; it’s proof that all of his songwriting faculties are still intact. The fascinating thing is the overall sound of Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie and its production; it’s intriguingly low-key, especially given Buckingham’s appetite for lush textures in recent years. Accordingly, the album falls somewhere between curio and convincing; there’s enough here to hold the attention of the casual Mac fan, however fleetingly, but diehards should find a bit more to dig into in the brighter moments. A worthwhile exercise.
Fleetwood Mac fans as well as casual passers-by will recognise these names. Yes, two-fifths of the rock colossus has headed to the studio and come up with a 10-song duo album that shows big choruses can almost (but not quite) cover up for occasional by-the-numbers clangers (Too Far Gone).
Still, inviting drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie along for the ride has had its obvious benefits, allowing Buckingham to revel in his guitar technique, an assured hybrid of folk and country fingerstyle and distorted wig-out.
McVie brings the air and lightness of touch, her warm vocals a foil to Buckingham’s more gritty delivery (Red Sun and Lay Down For Free are classic Mac).
• Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie. Self-titled. Warner Music.
• Three stars (out of five)
Single download: Red Sun
For those who like: Elton John
SiriusXM’s Volume presented a Town Hall with Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie, hosted by Mark Goodman. Buckingham and McVie, founding members of Fleetwood Mac, have a new album out together called, Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie.
During this SiriusXM Town Hall, Buckingham and McVie talk about the writing of their new album, Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie, taking a break from Fleetwood Mac, and the joys of working together.
Hear some of this Town Hall below. The full hour-long SirusXM Volume Town Hall airs on Friday, June 16, at 7 PM ET on SiriusXM Volume channel 106.
The new album from Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie feels like a big, warm hug.
The great melodies, intimate harmonies and terrific arrangements are instantly recognisable as coming from two of the band’s songwriters yet they’re new and intriguing enough to make it more than just another side project from an iconic group.
And for Christine, 73 – the understated genius behind the keyboards in Fleetwood Mac and writer of some of their most recognisable songs (Don’t Stop, Little Lies, Say You Love Me, Hold Me and Everywhere) – the sensation of reconnecting with old friends was the inspiration behind the new collaboration.
She officially retired from the band in 1998, after stepping away from touring a few years earlier, and it was her return to it for the 2015 reunion tour that sparked the collaboration with Lindsey.
“We’ve always had a particular musical relationship since he first joined the band – it was immediate,” Christine explains in her warm, honeyed tone.
“The whole band was just chemistry abounding but Lindsey and I, me being the piano player and him the guitar player, understand each other musically without saying anything.
“We’ve always worked well together over the years but never thought about doing an album together until recently and now we wonder why we didn’t think about doing it before.
“The moment I knew I was going back into the band I flew over to Santa Monica to start rehearsals but, before that, I’d sent Lindsey a few demos of stuff I’d recorded and he went into his studio to arrange them. He played them back to me and I said, ‘These sound really great.’ So we decided to go and record them properly. (Fittingly, fellow Mac members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, on drums and bass, also perform on the album.)
“After we finished the world tour, Lindsey got in touch and said, ‘What are we going to do with these songs, they’re too good to just shelve?’ So we decided to go ahead with releasing a duet album.”
Christine’s return to Fleetwood Mac and her new burst of creativity comes at a time when many people thought that, after several years away from the hurly-burly of rock star life, she would never be seen on stage again.
In the intervening years she moved from California where she had lived for the best part of 30 years (she grew up in Birmingham and moved to London after attending art college), and bought a beautiful country home in the village of Wickhambreaux, Kent, which she spent several years restoring.
“I felt very at home in California but the place is prone to earthquakes and the one in 1994 scared the life out of me. For months afterwards I felt that every time I sat down I should have put on a seatbelt. It was really bad and I thought, ‘I’m going to get a house in England.’ I got to a point where I’d been in a band for 40 years and wanted to get back to real life.”
Yet being a lady of leisure eventually proved to be not enough for Christine.
“I started to say, ‘OK, now what?’ I had my two dogs there, they were my life. My marriage (to keyboardist Eddy Quintela) fell through, so I was living on my own and felt isolated. Most of my friends were in London or Los Angeles and worked nine-to-five for a living.
“I did have some friends living with me for a while but, eventually, I reached a point where it was time to start changing things.”
The catalyst for this change was Christine’s need to overcome her fear of flying and the intervention of Mick Fleetwood.
“I had a horrible terror that the next plane I got on would crash,” she remembers.
“So I had therapy to get over that, and other issues I’d developed through isolation, and sorted myself out. My therapist and I discussed the idea of me writing songs again and trying to reach out to the rest of the band as well.
“The therapist asked where I wanted most to fly if I could and I said Maui (one of the Hawaiian islands), as Mick lives there and I have a lot of friends there. So I just bought the ticket without knowing if I’d actually go. I’d always stayed in touch with Mick and soon after I bought the ticket he said he was coming to London, so we met up and I flew back to Maui with him. I didn’t even notice the wheels leave the ground. Since then, it’s been great. I’ve even flown in Africa in one of those prop jobs.”
While with Mick in Maui, he persuaded her to get on stage with his local band, gradually coaxing her back into the idea of returning to her musical career.
“Steven Tyler, from Aerosmith, was there. We belted out a few songs and I just thought, ‘This is good...’”
Christine admits that it was performing live that sustained her through her final years before she left Fleetwood Mac.
“When I first left, I didn’t miss it as I was tired of the travelling. The gigs were the only thing that really sustained me.”
And after her long break, being back with her bandmates has given her a new lease of life.
The closing track on the Lindsey Buckingham/ Christine McVie album is called Carnival Begin, written by Christine and with its lyrics of “I want it all... a new merry-go-round” it is clear that she has a strong appetite for change. Fleetwood Mac’s famously colourful previous life, where sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll made for a potent combination, is now a thing of the past and they are enjoying better personal relationships and new respect from audiences.
“Underlying the band now is a great sense of affection,” reflects Christine.
“We bind together my style, Lindsey’s style and Stevie’s (Nicks) style as songwriters, and it’s a democratic band in that we make sure everyone has the same amount of songs to sing both onstage and on record, although I have to say, it’s Lindsey that really directs the band.”
Next month, Christine and Lindsey are touring the States with the new album and she is looking forward to it after Fleetwood Mac’s triumphant world tour in 2015.
“We had such a great range of ages in the audience, from people who bought our albums the first time around to their children and grandchildren.
“I think we’ve become a hip band to the younger generation. After being seen as middle-of-the-road, we are now fashionable again.”
Christine is now living in London and when she gets back from touring in America she will decorate her new house, which is currently “an empty shell filled with cardboard boxes”.
Who looks after her beloved dogs when she’s away, I ask?
“They passed last year. They were very obliging,” she laughs.
“My other house was for sale. They were 16 and had had a good life. It was sad but things came together at the right time. Everything is for the good in the end.”
The single In My World is out now; the album Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie is released on June 9 on Rhino Records.
THE MAKING OF BUCKINGHAM MCVIE
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Review: Buckingham/McVie – Lindsey Buckingham . Christine McVie
