Joe (Somebody Please Burn His Goddamn Dictionary) Fernbacher, Creem, 12/82
Sitting here on the verandah of my unseasonably chillbound wickiup, making snotty faces and rude gestures at the swarming teen clans as they sullenly make their way home from those first annoying days of high school--sweet Maybelline everybabes struttin’ their stiff, designer asses, Eloi-like stud-boys sportin’ forever tans and frazzled frisbees. And me, my Millers in tow, finding it disarmingly difficult to focus on all this pop gris-gris I’ve been shanghaied into dealing with today.
I rap my pencil against my carmine-colored jodhpurs, caress the corn-rows on my hair shirt, and yearn for my monthly brannigan of metalese. I can’t seem to hear it. Instead, all I pick up in the distant background is this boggish ghee of L.A. solar-baked noise. “Fleetwood Mac,” I woefully bray. “Fleetwood Mac?” Just how does one deal with a band that's been around for so long and gone through so many changes, as many changes as rock itself, perhaps? What new pearls of insight do I have to jot down that haven’t been thrown thousands of times before? Crinking my neck to the left, I think, “Hmmm.” Crinking my neck to the right, I trill, “Ahh-hah!” It is, I realize, time for the ole “j’adoube” ploy.
A blink of the eyes. A sneeze and a cough. A cloud of dust. And a hearty...
Like fer sure man. I mean is this totally awesome or what? Like, gnarly to the max. Well, maybe not gnarly, and certainly not tubular, but then again not quite as grotty as I’d thought it might be, especially after that sun-stroked comedy of errors, Tusk. Cummon, man, The USC Marching Band!!? Jeezuz!
Mirage is an undeniable expression of future-shocked mellowtude. Which, I’m sure, means that for some people it IS truly an awesome record, just as I’m equally sure that for others it is nothing more than a poor excuse for a record--a waste of time and a catawampus to be feared and denied.
Me, I’m into temporizing, so let’s hem and haw for awhile.
On one hand, this is an excursion into the darker sides of the mellow beast, a look into the empty lacunae of laid-backness and a slicker than oil presentation by the dreaded money cabals. On the other, it is a deep glance into the souls of two of rock’s most misunderstood, maligned and mistreated women.
Fact: Fleetwood Mac, as it stands in its current incarnation, is Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie. The men in the band are pure backup (despite the cloying efforts of Lindsey Buckingham to dig up the moldering spirit of Buddy Holly) and as such they just fill in the gaps, round out the record, or just plain snooze when the forces of Nicks and McVie grasp the moment.
Stevie Nicks is the Snow Queen of rock’n’roll, few people will dispute that. She’s got a gypsy spirit that’s captivatingly honest as well as sensuous, her songs reflect a complex soul wallowing in an even more complex lifestyle, and her voice is fascinating and probing. Whereas Christine McVie is the epitome of rock’s earthier moments, her singing low and resonant and her demeanor just plain smooth. She’s the kind of woman every rock writer yearns to marry. Both of these women write the music and lyrics that have taken Fleetwood Mac out of the soon to be forgotten and cut-out, blues band derivative tar-pits--taken them righteously or not, into the arenas of superstardom.
Mirage is a perfect example of what I’m talking about: while it’s certainly not the Fleetwood Mac masterpiece everyone might be claiming it to be, it is a solid effort. Thanks mainly to the team of Nicks and McVie, with just a slight edge going to Nicks this time. Her songs--“That’s Alright,” “Straight Back,” and the truly haunting “Gypsy,” are full of power and force of vision. Her lyrical style is sometimes confusing, but when heard with her voice it melts in your mind not in your hands. McVie’s “Hold Me” is the current radio favorite and well worth the time it takes to listen to it, and her “Only Over You” is pop luv-balladeering at its most endearing.
Lindsey Buckingham’s songs are, well, annoying. Although “Empire State” could raise eyebrows or provoke a chuckle or two in the Chamber of Commerce offices in Albany.
And that’s about it for the whole album. Does this mean I like it or not? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just lost in the wondrous heart of my own inner-mirages of contradiction and annoyance at having to deal with this. Maybe. One never knows, does one?
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