On Tuesday,
Sept. 16, Lindsey Buckingham, the famed and oft-overlooked musical engine
behind Fleetwood Mac released his fifth solo album. Gift of Screws is Buckingham’s fifth solo project since his 1987
departure from Fleetwood Mac.
Though
Buckingham was the mastermind behind Fleetwood Mac’s bestselling 1975 album Rumours, which according to the
Recording Industry Association of America has sold approximately 19 million
copies, he remains surprisingly under the radar. Indeed, in one of the tracks
off Buckingham’s 2006 Under the Skin,
he sings “reading the paper, saw a re
view, said I was a visionary, but nobody
knew.”
But with Gift of Screws, Buckingham bursts back
onto the scene with raw vocal expression, scathingly brilliant guitar work and
an attitude of freshness not seen in a fifty-something musician in quite a long
while. Contrast these qualities with 2006’s Under
the Skin and you find a very interesting parallel.
Buckingham’s
music is always introspective. Under the
Skin finds that personal reflection in a folksy, sweeping, almost ballad-like
sense. Gift of Screws is driven by a
more rock-oriented feel; it might
even be considered an improvement on Buckingham’s 1991 Out of the Cradle, an album huge in
and artistic progression.
Gift of Screws has plenty of moments where the listener
recognizes Buckingham’s signature guitar finger-picking, a method he utilized
while in Fleetwood Mac and on all of his solo projects. In the opener “Great
Day” there is a solo that Rolling Stone describes as “so
blowtorch-hot, it seems specifically designed to bitch-slap anyone with the
nerve to wonder if Lindsey Buckingham still rocks.”
“
Fade” is a song that is directly reminiscent of a Fleetwood Mac rock piece, and
that is nothing to complain about. Indeed, Lindsey does still rock, and will
continue to do so if Gift of Screws is
any indication.
Buckingham
has a tour scheduled for this fall, and will be at the Ridgefield Playhouse on Wednesday,
Oct. 15.
