Fleetwood Mac

No song captures the cocaine-fuelled roller coaster members of Fleetwood Mac rode during the recording of Tusk better than the erratic, heart-pounding title track, written by Lindsey Buckingham. Buckingham, the creative push behind this album, orchestrates an ambitious, mostly solid double album that was overshadowed by its predecessor, Rumours.

At a cost of two years and well over a million dollars, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk represents
both the last word in lavish California studio pop and a brave but tentative lurch forward by
the one Seventies group that can claim a musical chemistry as mysteriously right -- though
not as potent -- as the Beatles'. In its fits and starts and restless changes of pace, Tusk
inevitably recalls the Beatles' "White Album" (1968), the quirky rock jigsaw puzzl... More >

A million bucks is what I call obsessive production, but for once it means something. This is like reggae, or Eno--not only don't Lindsey Buckingham's swelling edges and dynamic separations get in the way of the music, they're inextricable from the music, or maybe they are the music. The passionate dissociation of the mix is entirely appropriate to an ensemble in which the three principals have all but disappeared (vocally) from each other's work. But only Buckingham is attuned enough to get exciting music out of a sound so spare and subtle it reveals the limits of Christine McVie's simplicity and shows Stevie Nicks up for the mooncalf she's always been. Also, it doesn't make for very good background noise. (Grade - B+)