Fleetwood Mac

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Fleetwood Mac

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It might help to emphasize the greatness of this record by noting that I'm the last person on the world who should love it; my genres are classical, jazz, and to the extent that I enjoy pop/rock, my tastes go in the opposite direction from the folk-influenced pop that Fleetwood Mac did well. If you buy a Fleetwood Mac album on Amazon (as I've discovered), the buying recommendations that start coming to you include James Taylor, the Eagles, Carly Simon, etc. Completely not my thing.

But hoo boy, is this a great record. It deserves to be considered one of the all-time rock/pop classics, and in my opinion is greater than its heralded follow-up, Rumours.

I base that on a view that the songs on this record are 1) just as catchy and infectious, but also 2) possessed of much greater emotional depth.

Consider first Stevie Nicks's timeless "Landslide," a poetic, haunting, acoustic jewel. I don't know why this song doesn't routinely come up atop those "all time 100 greatest songs" lists, but it really deserves to. It's hard to imagine a song that more beautifully captures the emotions it sings about: big life changes, relationship dissolution, feeling uncertain and scared, and trying to find the courage to move forward.

Immediately before "Landslide" on the record is another classic, Christine McVie's "Say You Love Me." It's basically a toe-tapping number good for singing along, but there's a subtext of poignancy to it that I've never been able to put my finger on. The lyrics don't really try to be profound. But there's something about the way McVie, Buckingham and Nicks sing the choruses together, especially in combination with the roving bass, and especially in the fadeout. When they get to the end and are repeating, "Fallin', fallin', fallin'" in three-part harmony, it just feels perfection.

And the album has other smash hits also: "Rhiannon" and "Over My Head" among them. "Over My Head" is prettier and more gentle in the album version than on the single version. "Rhiannon" isn't one of my favorite songs (I never really liked the whole Stevie Nicks persona where she seems to be narcissistically starring in her own fantasy novel) but it's an undeniably strong single.

So there you have four timeless hit songs that are at least as strong as the four best songs on Rumours. (Does anything on Rumours pack the emotional punch of "Landslide?"). But it's not just the headline numbers on this record but the supporting tunes that are fantastic.

"Blue Letter" is a wonderful song, could easily have been a hit of its own (it sounds as though it influenced the composition of "Say You Love Me," even on down to the affecting fadeout.) "Monday Morning," an energetic up-tempo number by Lindsey Buckingham, gets the album off to a terrific start. "Crystal" is really a beautiful, emotional, poetic piece, composed by Stevie Nicks, sung mostly by Buckingham. It's good for a lump in the throat; Nicks had a great gift for conveying powerful emotions in simple, understated composition.

The six-song sequence that runs: Blue Letter, Rhiannon, Over My Head, Crystal, Say You Love Me, and Landslide is about as strong a six-song run that any band has ever recorded (and the two that precede that run aren't bad either.)

In sum, Fleetwood Mac is at their hit-making best on this record, but there is a poetry and emotional power to this music that you don't hear on their later recordings. It paved the way for the phenomenal chart success of Rumours, but is in my opinion the greater of the two albums.

As any Fleetwood Mac fan already knows, this is an excellent, classic album filled with great songs. The album itself easily deserves five stars in my book. This is where the original version of "Landslide" first appeared, not to mention some of Christine McVie's best songs ever-- her love songs appear upbeat on the surface, but there are darker undertones to her writing on "Over My Head" and "Say You Love Me," which makes sense, considering that her marriage to bassist John McVie was about to end.

Unfortunately, the sound quality on this remastered edition simply isn't that good. The sound is fuller and there is more low end (bass) than on the original CD, but there isn't enough definition or volume, so the whole thing tends to sound murky. On the original CD release, at least everything was clear and consistent-- I almost think it sounded better that way. I felt the same way listening to the remaster of "Tusk"-- it just seems like they didn't go "all the way" with the remastering, which is a shame, because these could've been beautiful-sounding discs. If you want to hear good quality remastered Fleetwood Mac, get "The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac" 2-CD set. I wish they had put the same amount of care into the albums as they did with the Best-of CDs.

Don't get me wrong, this is still a great album, and most music fans won't have a problem with the sound-- BUT if you are a picky audiophile (as I am), you will probably be disappointed with the quality of this remaster.