Tusk (1979)

Artist: Fleetwood Mac
Release Year: 1979

Rating: 8/10

Track Listing: 1) Over and Over; 2) The Ledge; 3) Think About Me; 4) Save Me a Place; 5) Sara; 6) What Makes You Think You're the One; 7) Storms; 8) That's All for Everyone; 9) Not That Funny; 10) Sisters of the Moon; 11) Angel; 12) That's Enough for Me; 13) Brown Eyes; 14) Never Make Me Cry; 15) I Know I'm Not Wrong; 16) Honey Hi; 17) Beautiful Child; 18) Walk a Thin Line; 19) Tusk; 20) Never Forget.

Well, here I go again with my usual rants against double albums.  You know, I should probably just make a separate page for this part.  All the usual double album problems abound, but some really, really great ideas emerge on here.

The best numbers are the rockers.  "The Ledge" and "Not That Funny" are loud, stompy, and fun, with just enough paranoia in there: pure Lindsey, in other words.  And "Think About Me" is just as good as everything on Rumours, from the immaculately smooth melodic turns to the perfect synergy between all the members.  In a way, this may be as good a contender for the "quintessential Fleetwood Mac song" as you can get.  "Sisters of the Moon" is even better, though.  Anybody who loves "The Chain" but wants more of Stevie Nicks' trademark "witchy" intonations in there will be happy - and that's before Buckingham caps it off with some of the most ferocious solos he's ever played.  

The mid-tempo numbers are mostly brilliant, too.  "Save Me a Place" is the big highlight here for its impeccable harmonies that verge on religious, but "Angel" gives us some of the most infectious hooks on the album.  Then, there are the other, dreamier numbers that instill a falling, cascading feeling that's really something else.  "That's All for Everyone" and "Walk a Thin Line" are the ones that manage this, and both are great.  And as for "Sara", it's certainly beautiful, and it takes you places, but I have to be in the right mindset for a six-minute meditation that remains in the same chord sequence and buries most of its instrumental dynamism so low in the mix.  Fortunately, that mindset isn't hard for me to reach after the first four songs.  Good stuff.

Unfortunately, there's less good to be said about the slower numbers.  Of course, no Mac album is complete without a few romantic meditations, but you have to be careful how many of those you plant onto a double album.  And no matter what you do, do not open with a sleeper like "Over and Over"!  It's pleasant, but either crank up the tempo or move it down a few tracks.  Later on, "Storms" and "Beautiful Child" are heartfelt and pretty, but also sleep-inducing, sucking all the energy out of the proceedings.  The former, in particular, stops us dead after the exasperated romp of "What Makes You Think You're the One", and the momentum is never fully recovered afterward.  

The biggest miracle, though, is the white-hot brilliance of the title track.  "Tusk" may be a phallic metaphor, sure, but it's also a direct thematic complement to the prehistoric, primal urges in the song, further suggested by those thup-thupping drums and background ululations.  And they got a whole marching band to join them for this!  By the time the shouts of "TUSK!" begin, with those eerie trumpet blasts behind them, it really sounds like a prehistoric blood ritual of some kind, and it's fantastic.  Is it worth slogging through about five filler songs before something as infectious as this?  Who knows, but now that we're here, I'm happy.

Even if this were a single album, though, and a lot of the filler tracks had been left off, I'd still have a major problem with the sound quality  on this album.  Maybe it's something to do with the production, but there's a certain "thinness" to the sound that prevents most of these songs from really coming to life.  The immediacy of the previous two albums is gone, and in its place is a hazy sort of distance that brings nothing but lethargy by the second half.  And yet, for all that that implies, there are still a lot of great ideas on here, many of which must rank among the band's best.  It's just that the production turns songs that could have stood out on their own, into cloudy fragments that are harder to separate from the whole, while also depriving them of the chance to break apart from the two monolithic albums before them.

In the end, what you get is something halfway between Blonde on Blonde and All Things Must Pass, both in length and in vibes.  Listening to this all in one go is certainly doable, but somewhere along the line, it becomes as much of a meditation as it does an album.  That's all fine enough if you're a Dylan- or Harrison-level songwriter, but some of these songs are just nowhere near that, and that breaks the spell more often than not.  

All right, that's enough of that, now, because this is still one of Fleetwood Mac's best albums, and a constant favorite of mine despite its length.  There's almost the same kind of mysticism present here that also made Rumours work so well, with the added experimentation and rawness of sound to bring out a different kind of magic.