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Tag: Extended Play

New Fleetwood Mac track finds group as lively as ever

Fleetwood Mac’s announcement that it was making an EP was surprising: The group hadn’t released new music since 2003’s underrated Say You Will, and its current arena tour seemed more like another back-catalog cash-grab than a chance to road-test new material. Likewise, the band hasn’t done much publicity behind the new music, keeping the release date secret and only playing two of the new songs live. But there’s no reason for Lindsey Buckingham and company to be coy: Extended Play’s opener, “Sad Angel,” is everything a fan could want from latter-day Mac. With frenetic guitar from Buckingham, expert harmony from Stevie Nicks, and a chorus that’s catchy as hell, the song is a great reminder of how well these folks can craft pop music. Buckingham has been making quality albums on his own for this past decade, but he’s livelier than ever on “Sad Angel,” drawing parallels between the bombast of war and rock music. Even Mick Fleetwood’s drumming is more energetic than it’s been since the ’80s. If Fleetwood Mac has more tracks like this in them, here’s hoping another album surfaces soon.

Noah Cruickshank / A.V. Club / Monday, May 6, 2013

May 5, 2013
MUSIC REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac, Extended Play (iTunes)

Fleetwood Mac Extended Play (iTunes)

In the decade since Fleetwood Mac released 2003’s Say You Will, a new surge of interest in the group’s distinctive pop style has taken hold in the modern pop, alternative and country communities. Recent music by artists as diverse as Cut Copy, Lady Antebellum, Vampire Weekend, Haim, Daft Punk, John Mayer and Little Big Town was inspired by the warmth and harmonic richness of Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham/Stevie Nicks era, and last year’s tribute album, Just Tell Me That You Want Me, offered persuasive testimony to the band’s enduring influence.

But for all the enthusiasm those acts show for Fleetwood Mac’s pop shimmer, most would balk at walking a mile in their shoes, and continued tension within the band is a key reason why they only mustered four tracks for Extended Play, Fleetwood Mac’s first new material since 2003. But this concise burst of fresh songs, mostly co-produced by Buckingham and Mitchell Froom (Crowded House), says more about what it really means to be part of Fleetwood Mac than anything since Rumours and Tusk. Buckingham takes it on directly with “Sad Angel,” which addresses the challenge of getting Nicks on board with new Mac material while the fans are “calling out for more.” Even the inclusion of “Without You,” an unreleased Buckingham Nicks song, underlines the continued tension — putting the song on Extended Play was a compromise after Nicks and Buckingham could not agree on how to handle the 40th anniversary of the Buckingham Nicks album.

News OK / Friday, May 3, 2013

May 3, 2013
ALBUM REVIEW: Fleetwood Mac returns

Fleetwood Mac, Extended Play (LMJS Productions) * * * 1/2

Fleetwood Mac’s first new music since 2003’s Say You Will is short on Stevie Nicks, who resisted recording a full album with the group. The resulting four-track EP, released to iTunes as a digital download, makes you wish for more on the strength of Lindsey Buckingham’s three new songs.

Nicks contributes the folksy “Without You,” a reject from the 1973 sessions for the Buckingham Nicks LP. The pair harmonize over Buckingham’s tinny acoustic strumming. Meh.

Much better: Buckingham’s fresh songs in which he returns to writing crisp, accessible, engaging California pop/rock, like the infectiously melodic and rhythmically driving “Sad Angel” and the breezy “Miss Fantasy,” a piquant taste of Mirage-era Mac that makes great use of the famed rhythm section of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie.

His stark solo piano ballad, “It Takes Time” — imagine Christine McVie’s “Songbird” as its closest cousin — intrigues the most because it’s unlike anything the guitarist has released.

Howard Cohen / Miami Herald / Friday, May 3, 2013

May 3, 2013
First impression: Fleetwood Mac’s four-song Extended Play

The four songs on the new Fleetwood Mac EP — which the legendary pop-rock outfit put up for sale on iTunes on Tuesday morning with little advance warning — arrive steeped in echoes of the past, in at least one case quite literally: “Without You,” a strummy acoustic number overlaid with harmony vocals by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, reportedly dates back to sessions for the two singers’ 1973 album as a long-haired vocal duo deeply opposed to shirts.

But the other tunes on Extended Play, newly composed by Buckingham and co-produced by him and L.A. studio pro Mitchell Froom, feel no less rooted in earlier iterations of this on-again/off-again institution.

“Miss Fantasy” has some of the folky back-porch guitar action of “Never Going Back Again,” while the stripped-down “It Takes Time” could be Buckingham’s version of Christine McVie’s big piano ballad, “Songbird.” And opener “Sad Angel,” which you can hear below, shimmers with the glossy textures of 1987’s Tango in the Night. (Incidentally, if you want to get a sense of Fleetwood Mac’s enduring influence on synthed-up young rock acts like Phoenix, go straight to Tango — it looms larger these days than the vaunted Rumours does.)

Nothing about this self-reference surprises, of course, especially given that Fleetwood Mac is in the midst of a giant arena tour that will bring the band to the Hollywood Bowl on May 25 and Anaheim’s Honda Center on May 28. Old hits are what the members are playing onstage — “Don’t Stop,” “Dreams,” “Go Your Own Way,” “Silver Springs” — so old hits are what the members are hearing in their heads.

And yet Extended Play — Fleetwood Mac’s first studio output since Say You Will in 2003 — doesn’t sound stale or overworked; indeed, the songs have an impressive crispness (after only a handful of spins, anyway) that makes their familiarity seem less like evidence of a tapped creative supply than like proof that this is simply the kind of music Fleetwood Mac writes.

“I remember you,” Buckingham sings over and over again near the end of “Miss Fantasy,” and he might be addressing his own melody. But it’s a good one. You’ll remember it too.

Mikael Wood / Los Angeles Times / Wednesday, May 1, 2013

May 1, 2013
SONG REVIEW: ‘Sad Angel’

Official Ultimate Classic Rock rating: 7 out of 10

Earlier today (April 30), Fleetwood Mac released a four-song EP, Extended Play, their first new studio material since 2003′s Say You Will. While the EP is available for purchase exclusively at iTunes, you can stream the lead track and first single, “Sad Angel,” below.

Written by Lindsey Buckingham, “Sad Angel” opens with some typically kinetic, percussive Buckingham rhythm guitar before his vocals come in, and joined later by the whole band. The rhythm section of John McVie and Mick Fleetwood chug along in typical no-nonsense, muscular fashion, with some keyboards and a few layers of guitars to fill it out.

Even though she sings in tandem with Buckingham for all but the opening 15 seconds, Stevie Nicks is largely invisible. She takes her lines well and the two still blend together very well, but there’s little of her trademark personality on display. Maybe that’s a little harsh, but for a band that has traded so frequently on the duo’s history together, “Sad Angel” doesn’t offer much in the way of tension between its two lead singers.

Not that that’s a bad thing, of course. Throughout the run-up to the release of ‘Extended Play,’ we’ve heard about how those past issues are behind them — note how they’re posed in the press photo above — so what better way to prove it than with a nice, poppy song that is, lyrically, light years removed from their famously autobiographical work.

Or is it? The ambiguous lyrics could be Buckingham acknowledging that he and Nicks need each other, and are never better than when they’re together. “We fall to Earth together / The crowd calling out for more / Hello, hello sad angel / Have you come to fight the war?” they sing in the chorus. It’s hard to tell, because we usually associate Nicks with gypsies or witches, not angels.

If “Sad Angel” is about her, then it’s a nice peace offering as the two of them prepare to write the newest chapter in their incredibly long history together. If not, then it’s still a welcome return to form for one of rock’s most enduring bands.

Dave Lifton / Ultimate Classic Rock / Tuesday, April 30, 2013

April 30, 2013
Where Do I Start With Fleetwood Mac?

Fleetwood Mac, which put out a new EP today, was one of the few music choices my parents and I could agree on. I would scream along with the rocking chorus of “The Chain” on the way to school and dance around the house to “Little Lies.” Since then, my appreciation for the band—from Lindsey Buckingham’s virtuosic guitar playing to the group’s layered harmonies—has grown more sophisticated, but the songs still pack the simple, emotional wallop they did for me 15 years ago.

Alternately credited with and cursed for creating “adult contemporary,” the members of Fleetwood Mac are almost as famous for their personal drama as for their classic songs. Originally, though, Fleetwood Mac was a simple British blues band, formed in 1967 by guitarist Peter Green and named after drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie. This lineup, with a few additions, put out three albums, which did well in the U.K., but received little attention stateside. (One of the singles from that era, “Black Magic Woman,” became a major hit for Santana.) In 1970, Green left the band after suffering from a mental breakdown (he was later diagnosed as schizophrenic). A year later Christine McVie, John’s new wife, officially joined. A keyboardist who wrote her own music, Christine increasingly came to shape the band’s sound. Mick and the McVies stuck together through the early ’70s and more personnel changes—one of their guitarists joined the Children of God and another had an affair with Fleetwood’s wife—as they tried to replicate their British success in the U.S.

They didn’t have much luck until 1974, when Mick recruited the American folk duo Buckingham Nicks. For their first album together, this new version of Fleetwood Mac combined Christine’s songs with some that Lindsey and Stevie had already written. The eponymous result finally brought the band the American popularity they’d been looking for, selling five million copies and reaching No. 1 on the charts. It had four hit singles, including McVie’s poppy “Say You Love Me” and Nicks’ haunting “Rhiannon,” which highlighted her wild performance style.

Success also brought trouble, as it does. The band’s two couples began to unravel—as did Mick Fleetwood’s marriage to model Jenny Boyd—just as they returned to the studio. And so the musical legend of Rumours was born: The album is made up of songs that Christine, Lindsey, and Stevie wrote about their dissolving relationships. The most famous of these are Buckingham and Nicks’ dueling takes on their doomed love, her ethereal “Dreams” and his aggressive “Go Your Own Way.” But at the heart of the album is the only song all five of the band members ever collaborated on, “The Chain,” which emphasizes their commitment to carrying on as a group despite their personal disagreements.

After the massive sales of Rumours, the studio invested heavily in the band’s follow-up. But Buckingham was determined not to repeat himself and began experimenting with different recording techniques (including, for instance, laying on a tile floor as he sang into the microphone). Meanwhile, Stevie had embarked on a secret affair with Mick—which ended, much to her chagrin, when he left her for her best friend. Eighteen months and the largest recording budget of all time produced the messy Tusk. The album sold about a quarter of the copies its predecessor did, but the unnerving title track, which features the USC marching band, balances Buckingham’s desire for punky weirdness and the rest of the band’s gift for grandeur.

The band put out two albums in the ’80s: 1982’s Mirage—which was largely overshadowed by Nicks’ solo release Belladonna—and 1987’s Tango in the Night. Tango was troubled; the band’s lifestyle remained extravagant and Nicks had abandoned coke for Klonopin, which made her spacey and unreliable. Buckingham and McVie, who had a hit with my old favorite, “Little Lies,” took over most of the songwriting duties, but Nicks, with the help of Sandy Stewart, still managed to contribute one great song, the cheerful “Seven Wonders.”

After another blow-up with Nicks, Buckingham left the band right before the Tango in the Night tour. The split wasn’t permanent, but the band never really recovered; in 1997, Christine McVie permanently retired from Fleetwood Mac. The remaining foursome has toured sporadically since then. Their 2003 album, Say You Will, was fairly successful, but failed to live up to their earlier work.

The new EP is the band’s first new material since then. The best of its tracks, “Sad Angel,” hearkens back to the catchy pop-rock of Rumours, rather than the smoothed-out sound of their more recent stuff. Perhaps they’ve rediscovered the knack they used to have for transmuting a troubled dynamic into powerful songs, though it’s hard to tell on the basis of just three new songs, all by Buckingham. (The fourth track, “Without You,” is an old Buckingham Nicks tune.) However it turns out, I’ll always have “The Chain.” And if you’ve never given the band much thought, you’ll find 10 tracks to get you started below~~, both as a Spotify playlist and on YouTube and Amazon~~. Enjoy.

“Rhiannon” from Fleetwood Mac (1975)

“The Chain” from Rumours (1977)

“Black Magic Woman” from The Pious Bird of Good Omen (1969)

“Seven Wonders” from Tango in the Night (1987)

“Tusk” from Tusk (1979)

“Dreams” from Rumours (1977)

“Second Hand News” from Rumours (1977)

“Say You Love Me” from Fleetwood Mac (1975)

“Little Lies” from Tango in the Night (1987)

“Go Your Own Way” from Rumours (1977)

Alex Heimbach / The Slate / Tuesday, April 30, 2013

April 30, 2013
Fleetwood Mac release Extended Play, first new music in a decade

Fleetwood Mac have released their first collection of new music in a decade. As promised, the legendary band tabled a full album in favor of an EP, titled Extended Play and available exclusively on iTunes.

The foursome — Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie — announced the release on the band’s website on Tuesday.

The record kicks off with the bouncy “Sad Angel,” in which Buckingham and Nicks harmonize over looping guitar and Mick Fleetwood’s driving beat. “Hello, hello sad angel, have you come to fight the war?” they ask.

The rest of the EP includes the classic-sounding “Without You,” which started as a track for Buckingham Nicks, the duo’s pre-Mac group. There’s also a piano ballad by Buckingham called “It Takes Time” and the album closer “Miss Fantasy.”

It’s their first new music since 2003’s Say You Will, which debuted and peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200.

The band told Billboard in February that, “Big, long albums don’t seem to be what everybody wants these days.” Whether a full-length album emerges from this current reunion is entirely up to fans, Nicks said.

“[Let’s] see if the world does want more music from us,” Nicks said. “If we get that feeling, that they do want another 10 songs, we can reassess.”

Billboard / Tuesday, April 30, 2013

April 30, 2013
Going their own way

Fleetwood Mac to go their own way performing new songs on tour — and fans outraged at ‘tickets that cost more than my rent’

Fans might clamour for the hits from Rumours but Fleetwood Mac will perform new material on their forthcoming tour.

Speaking to BBC 6 Music drummer Mick Fleetwood said the band had written three new songs, which they plan to play on stage later this year.

The 65-year-old hinted the recordings could be part of a “long term plan” to release a new studio album.

But fans hit back today at the price of tickets for the Fleetwood Mac tour, due to play in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Dublin. Tickets are priced between £50 and £125, but with a £12.50 booking fee can reach up to £137.50 each.

One fan tweeted: “Sorry Fleetwood Mac but your tickets cost more than my rent” while another said: “£135 each for Fleetwood Mac tickets…are they having a giraffe? Top price Beyonce tickets look set to be £95 too. Robbing bastards.”

The Rolling Stones were also criticised by fans last year for the cost of their tour, with tickets selling for as much as £1,300.

After frequent changes to the line-up since the band formed in London in 1967, the 2013 tour will feature Stevie Nicks, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, and founding members Mick Fleetwood on drums and John McVie on bass.

Fleetwood revealed this morning that he had written some songs with guitarist Lindsey Buckingham six months ago as “a calling card” for singer Nicks.

“We wanted her to know we wanted to make some new music and we had some great songs,” he said.

“But her mother died not too long after and it wasn’t the time for her to do any singing, so we dropped it.

”Then recently she’s sung on three of them and recorded one original song of hers, so we’re going to mix these songs down and there’ll be something that we will play hopefully on stage.“

Nicks vowed last year that the tour would not be the band’s last, who have had more than four decades of making music.

“It’s never going to be a final tour until we drop dead. There’s no reason for this to end as long as everyone is in good shape and takes care of themselves,” she said.

Daisy Wyatt / The Independent /

February 5, 2013
Lindsey Buckingham talks new Fleetwood Mac music

Fans knew a Fleetwood Mac tour was imminent, but what they didn’t know was that new music was in the works. Two new songs, “Sad Angel” and “Miss Fantasy,” will come out before the tour kicks off in April. But longtime fans of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks might be even more thrilled with this development: They’re seriously considering reviving their pre-Fleetwood Mac career as Buckingham Nicks – and recently recorded a song that was originally intended for the follow-up that never came to their one self-titled album. Buckingham sat down to talk exclusively to MSN about the new (and old) recordings.

MSN: When we spoke last year about your solo album Seeds We Sow you said a Fleetwood Mac reunion would happen.

Lindsey Buckingham: “Did I say it was going to happen in 2012?”

Yes, but you said you wanted to do an album first. Stevie told me she wanted to do an album but people aren’t interested in them anymore, so you have just the two songs for now.

“Oh no, that’s not true. I don’t know what she’s talking about. She just didn’t come with any songs. She didn’t want to do an album. I said ‘Stevie, what do you think?’ and she said ‘No, I don’t want to do that.’ So I didn’t push it. I’ve got all this stuff sitting around. I’ll get John (McVie) and Mick (Fleetwood) over here from Hawaii and do a low-key, under-the-radar situation, producer-wise, just see what happens. We cut like seven, eight tracks with Mitchell Froom and the stuff turned out great. We did it all in the proper keys for Stevie’s range, and for her to drop in her parts. My hope she would hear some of this stuff and love it and get drawn in. She wasn’t really prepared to love it, so she didn’t. She’s starting to love it more now, now that she’s on a couple. She felt sort of put-upon and that’s fair enough I guess. She had her idea of not wanting to do it and here I was getting John and Mick over, doing this rah-rah thing. Come on guys!”

I have a feeling this interview is going to get the tour canceled before it begins…

“No, no, no, not at all. But I think probably she felt put-upon in the sense she didn’t have a lot of material sitting around to bring. Maybe there was a sense of pressure on her part. I was talking to Mick yesterday. At some point we’re going to be very glad we did this material. Something’s gonna happen with this. What that is remains to be seen. If we only use a couple of these for now, that’s fine. Stevie still needs to come with something. Who’s to say? I’m not pushing for an album. Down the line, maybe. I think it would be great. Stevie’s gotta be happy, she’s gotta be comfortable and that’s really the bottom line.”

How did you hook up with Mitchell Froom?

“I had never met Mitchell but spoke with him on the phone. I like the guy. I like some of his reference points that I was aware of. I also knew he was a very skillful string-arranger in case we wanted anything more outside the box like that. And to top it off he lives about five minutes from me. We did this whole thing in a very handcrafted way. I’d go into his house and gave him all my rough demos first, some of which were fleshed out, others just snippets of things hummed into my phone….we sort of agreed on what songs we’d do, worked on arrangements. We had the whole thing worked out before John and Mick showed up. Then it was pretty organic. It was interesting for him – the peculiarity of how we do things… for three weeks we came up with all that’s stuff. It’s all very pop. It hearkens back to the Fleetwood Mac classic feel. And John and Mick were just playing their asses off.”

With all your recent touring and solo albums and new songs are you in a particularly prolific phase?

“I’m not sure. It’s maybe the fruition, or something like that, of the choices I’ve been able to make and implement. You can take it way back if you wanna get really philosophical and go back to Tusk. Since 2005, we got off the road from doing the Say You Will tour. I was working on a certain level of frustration at having several attempts of solo projects being co-opted and turned into Fleetwood Mac projects. It happened several times. I asked for three years off in order to do two back-to-back albums, which I did, just trying to get it all out of my system … I did Under the Skin and Gift of Screws … I began to get a much stronger sense of myself by putting some chronological things together …confidence enters into it, I guess, but just focus and momentum.”

Let’s talk about the new music coming out. There’s another deluxe Rumours package coming out with more unreleased stuff. After the DVD-A and the previous deluxe release what’s left in the vaults for that?

“You’re asking the wrong guy (laughs). I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it’s a marketing thing. I don’t have much invested in that. What my function is when these things come out – someone else finds this stuff, finds stuff that hasn’t come out before. Then it’s my job to make sure it’s OK, that it’s something I’m comfortable with… that the whole thing makes sense or even relates to the Rumours album. Having said that I’m not a fan of repackaging things over and over again. I wouldn’t lose any sleep if this package didn’t come out, let’s leave it at that.”

It’s frustrating to fans to get that again while the surround-sound mix of Tusk is still sitting in the vaults.

“We did it! Getting Warner Brothers to put it out is another matter. And getting the band to want to put it out. That was my baby and there’s a certain subtext of it being the undermining factor of the brand. Maybe there’s a certain sublime level of suppression going on – not that anyone’s sitting around saying that, it’s just not on anybody’s A-list of things to do (laughs).”

Tell me about the new songs “Sad Angel” and “Miss Fantasy.”

“I was writing a lot of stuff. I was thinking about Stevie when I was putting these together. Many of the songs I came up with were directed at Stevie. They were a dialog to her. Both those are very much that. ‘Sad Angel’ – I think of her in all her traumatic splendor as having quite a bit of sadness that she still deals with. At the moment that it was being written I really was thinking about the fact that she and I were not agreeing on the idea of an album. The chorus is ‘Hello, sad angel, have you come to fight the war?’ It goes on to talk about ‘the crowd’s calling out for more.’ It’s sort of a cyclical look at our lives, the competitiveness of it yet the underlying unity of it. Each of our journeys has never been not a little about the other. ‘Miss Fantasy’ is more of the same thing. It’s a look back on….it’s talking about having a dream, recalling certain events that occurred years and years ago. The chorus is talking about ‘Miss Fantasy, it may be that you don’t remember me, but I remember you.’ That’s addressing all that’s happened over the course of time. You remember the person you were and the person I was back then? Is there any way to find any of that? Do we want to? Is it important to? Those are songs about Stevie and me.”

Doing the song “Stephanie” on your solo tour from the out-of-print 1973 Buckingham Nicks album raised fans’ hopes that it’ll come out on CD someday. You also made a comment on the BBC about working with Stevie again. I assume that meant this tour but it was interpreted by some as you saying you might want to re-form Buckingham Nicks.

“That’s not a misinterpretation. I would love to go out and do Buckingham Nicks. It’s sort of ironic because when Stevie came over here and started working we just had a great time, the best time we have had in years. She did bring in one song that was supposed to be her contribution to the Fleetwood Mac thing. After we were done with it she decided she wanted to put it on the Buckingham Nicks album (laughs). So that’s fine too. I don’t care. It’s an old song from pre-Fleetwood Mac. It was written sometime after Buckingham Nicks came out but before we joined Fleetwood Mac. We were working on a second possible Buckingham/Nicks album that never happened. So yes. The issue with all of that is once again a logistics issue. I have no problem with dropping a bonus track or one from her and one from me and putting out Buckingham Nicks finally on CD. …she said ‘We could do some dates between legs of the Fleetwood Mac tour.’ I’m thinking ‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s logistically possible.’ We’ve got a little less than 40 dates on the books, we’ll probably add a few more…we’ll do Europe and probably go down and do the summer in Australia and New Zealand. When the hell are we going to get together and rehearse a Buckingham Nicks show? So in my mind if she’s really serious what would be good to do is wait to put the (old) album out, or put it out and then do a new Buckingham Nicks album. The tour would have to wait till after that. Whether or not that will happen….she’s very heartfelt about what she’s saying, but it isn’t always clear. I don’t know what to say about that. But yes, to be very direct in response to your question if it were up to me… I would love to go out and do that again. That would be so cyclical and so karmically appropriate. If you see Stevie just tell her I said that.”

Mark C. Brown / MSN

December 6, 2012