This isn’t the first time Lindsey Buckingham has done a ‘duet’ album with a member, or future member, of Fleetwood Mac. There was Buckingham Nicks, that early collaboration with his then paramour, while Fleetwood Mac’s outrageously underrated 2003 album Say You Will comprised nine songs apiece by Buckingham and Nicks, making it effectively the follow-up to that 1973 team-up.
As for Buckingham and Christine McVie, they similarly have tended to write apart, give or take World Turning from 1975’s self-titled Mac album, and Mystified and You And I, Part II from Tango In The Night.
Here, they’ve joined forces, but even without the benefit of a finished album and attendant credits, the guess is that the songs are individual efforts. You can tell the ones with more Lindsey input (they bear shards of Trouble or Big Love) from the ones that have a greater Christine quotient (the ones with glimmers of Everywhere or Think About Me), not least because they take turns with lead vocals on the 10 tracks.
That said, on Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie – which features Mick Fleetwood and John McVie on many of the tunes, so only Nicks’s absence stops this from being the logical successor to Say You Will – you can hear McVie bringing a commercial lustre to Buckingham’s more solipsist forays, and Buckingham giving McVie’s simpler efforts a studio dazzle.
Together, they’ve produced an album of cracking Mac-esque pop, most notably the clipped, catchy Feel About You and the tightly constructed first single In My World.
