Week: Sat 3rd June to Fri 9th June
Format: Vinyl
Producer(s): Lindsey Buckingham & Richard Dashut
Track listing:
SIDE 1
1. Big Love *
2. Seven Wonders
3. Everywhere *
4. Caroline
5. Tango In The Night *
6. Mystified
SIDE 2
1. Little Lies
2. Family Man
3. Welcome To The Room... Sara *
4. Isn't It Midnight
5. When I See You Again *
6. You and I, Part II
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 44:28
This album has the honour of being Fleetwood Mac's second highest selling record after Rumours (1977); and, at the time of blogging, the last to feature the classic line-up of Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Apparently when Christine rejoined the Mac in 2013, the band started work on a new studio album. They toured as the classic line-up, but no new record eventuated. Stevie left to further her solo career and instead we have the new offering Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie by, you guessed it, Lindsey and Christine. John and Mick are on the album too. Bizarrely, Tango In The Night started off as a solo album for Buckingham, and ended up being the last official studio Mac release. To paraphrase Nick Cave, it's funny how things go. Apparently Stevie was pretty hard to nail down for these sessions too! Over the eighteen month recording period, she was there for about three weeks.Anyway, this album is an absolute corker. I now own my dad's old vinyl copy (I may have mentioned in a previous blog entry that he got it for his 40th birthday many moons ago), but I also bought it on CD while I was in Adelaide with my family in early 1992. In the argument of CD vs vinyl, the artwork looks a damn sight better on a record sleeve, compared to the CD booklet. I was always more impressed with the digital sound as an impressionable young teen though.
If you're only familiar with the hits here, you're doing yourself a disservice. I mean, the hits are good and plentiful, boasting Little Lies, Seven Wonders, Everywhere and Big Love (the latter has now almost been eclipsed by Buckingham's amazing solo performances of it); but the whole album is pretty bang on. Even the gimmicky Family Man has some great guitar lines and a fairly catchy refrain. Stevie Nicks' Welcome To The Room... Sara is as classic as anything off Rumours or Tusk and the sonic majesty of the title track is electrifying. Some of Buckingham's best soloing right there, I reckon; although he does give it welly on Isn't It Midnight too. Christine McVie's Mystified is a very subdued, but nonetheless pretty track which sounds like it could be the album's closer, instead of ending the first side.
Some of the production is a little dated, particularly the drum sound and the keyboard saturation, but that doesn't take away from how good the songs are. Those distinctive voices blend as well as they ever did, sharing harmonies and counter melodies like so much oxygen and bliss. Nicks' lead vocal on When I See You Again giving way to Buckingham's works a treat. There's a thread connecting these songs together that makes it all cohesive...it sounds like an album despite no running concept or overarching theme. I can't put my finger on it, but they belong in this group.
Since I started listening to this record recently, I learnt that a deluxe edition of the album was reissued earlier this year, as it is now thirty years old! Freak me! Of course it is! Might be worth a look-see, methinks.
I doubt we'll get another album like this from them again, but we can always watch The Dance one more time, right?
