Gift of Screws - Lindsey Buckingham (2008)
The Week That Has Been
I went on the second, shorter leg of my summer vacation time. Went to Dallas, which was a long damn drive, to see BTS with my superfan wife. I did listen to my morning listens, but I didn’t have the ability to write anything–Richard Nixon was president when I was born, so nothing I write for publication gets written with my thumbs. So the last few days of the week are farily short entries, and… I dunno. You’re not paying by the word.
- fairly boring underground rock from Dead Milkmen, tbh
- definitely non-boring aughts post-hardcore with a great name
- Waylon Jennings’ Outlaw Country opus
- Bright, more major key cinematic post rock from Halocraft
- Gojira and their distinctively gnarly metal groove
- the proggy, folk-rocky noodlings of Audience
Lindsay Buckingham, the oft-overlooked mastermind
I’ve written about Fleetwood Mac a couple of times, and about Buckingham by himself once. I always say the same thing about the man’s pop sensibilities, attention to detail, and mastery of the modern studio soundboard taking a backseat to his vocals and guitar work in people’s minds.
I also think he has a knack that guys like Bono and Brandon Flowers inherited from him for making lyrics that are dense and verbose enough to sound profound from a distance, even when they’re kind of nonsense if you listen more closely.
All of these things are on display on this 21st century solo outing. He recorded it all himself at his home studio. As with his more famous outings, his tendency to never let anyone tell him no is both a curse and a blessing.
If I were going to take the time, I could probably map each of these tracks pretty closely to tricks that worked at some point with Mac. Separated from the magic of one of the great pop bands of a byegone era, some of it still sounds pretty good, while is a bit tedious.
The good: Great Day, a terse and nervous opener, and Gift Of Screws with a double-time headlong charge that’s unusual in the man’s catalag.
The tedious: Time Precious Time seems to be Buckingham showing he can still do the fast arpeggio thing on guitar, while looping lyrics over the top of it rather than writing an actual song. Treason, the closer, is one of thos profound-sounding lyrics that just looks dumber the more you try to understand it.
