Today Lindsey Buckingham released his highly anticipated self-titled album, the first in a decade, available on Reprise. To mark the occasion, Buckingham and band made their debut appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, performing album track “On The Wrong Side”. The album was written, produced and recorded by Buckingham at his home studio in Los Angeles, CA, tand released via vinyl, CD and on all digital and streaming services. Buckingham is in the midst of a North American tour which began in early September and will continue through late December.
Lindsey Buckingham is his first solo release since 2011’s Seeds We Sow and follows his departure from Fleetwood Mac. As with the seven studio and three live albums he has released as a solo artist beginning with 1981’s Law and Order, the new project showcases Buckingham’s instinct for melody and his singular fingerpicking guitar style, reaffirming his status as one of the most inventive and electrifying musicians of his generation.
You can also hear Buckingham’s signature acoustic guitar playing on Halsey’s “Darling” from her recently released Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross-produced album, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power.
Lindsey Buckingham Track-By-Track
1. Scream
Everything on the record is me, for better or worse (laughs). Many of the songs on this album are about the work and discipline it takes in maintaining a long-term relationship. Some of them are more about the discipline and some of them are more about the perks. “Scream” is about the perks. It felt very celebratory and it was also very, very simple and short. To the point. It didn’t evolve into some huge thing. It made its case and got the hell out. It just seemed like a good place to start the album, somehow. It’s very upbeat and very optimistic and very positive. It’s a celebration of an aspect of life.
2. I Don’t Mind
A lot of the vocal layering techniques you hear on songs like this are drawn from a painterly sensibility. There are many things like this that go back even to “Out of the Cradle” and “Don’t Look Down.” I wanted to break forms down into facets and do something analogous to cubism, and to make them surreal. To wear the artifice on the sleeve, if you will. Painting has been an influence in that way.
3. On The Wrong Side
There’s a line in this song that goes, “we were young / now we’re old / who can tell me which is worse?” It was like, tell me about it (laughs hard). I was thinking about Fleetwood Mac and probably a little bit about “Go Your Own Way” when I wrote this, just in terms of the kind of song it wanted to be. It’s not a song about a relationship — it’s a song about being in Fleetwood Mac, and being sort of stuck in a set of circumstances that has become, for better or worse, largely about commerce. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does draw a line between what side you might want to find yourself on at any given time. One of the disciplines of touring with Fleetwood Mac was living with the limitations of that psychologically. “On the Wrong Side” wanted to address that as a concept, but also in a way which was, in its own strange way, a celebration. Just like “Go Your Own Way” was not a happy song, subject-matter wise, but it was an ebullient song musically. This was sort of the same idea.
4. Swan Song
On this song and “Power Down,” I wanted to use drum loops as opposed to the sound of a kit. They both share some sensibilities in terms of their approach and their background vocals. They’re almost like the flip side of one coin. That’s a song about learning to live with relationships and some of the things you have to wait for. Once the initial dynamic between two people is intact and taken for granted, then it’s all about doing the work that needs to be done in order to keep things moving forward. I wanted to pivot a bit away from the first three songs, which had been a little less alienating, shall we say (laughs)? “Swan Song,” in terms of its musicality, is a little more like, what the hell am I listening to? Even the solos are somewhat jarring and unsettling. I wanted to make a little bit of a left turn at that point.
5. Blind Love
People get through marriages and relationships by letting certain things go, and realizing you’re never going to know everything about someone else. There are certain things you have to accept. Even so, you have to keep trying to find that person, and they’ve got to keep trying to find you, or things will erode.
6. Time
This is a song by a folk group called the Pozo-Seco Singers. I tried to keep very true to the original, so it’s not a huge departure from what they did. I remembered hearing that song on the radio when I was in high school and thought it was a really beautiful song at the time. It’s one of those things that stuck with me my whole life for some reason. It was something I’d had in mind to do as a cover for quite a while. I think what’s happened since I recorded it, and since I included it in this group of tunes, is that the actual theme — time, where does it go? — has become so much more tangible to me. It was something I understood as a concept and a poetic notion, but it wasn’t quite as visceral for me as it has become just in the last three or four years.
7. Blue Light
It’s a fun thing about a couple that somehow is able to be resilient. You let things get you down, but you never let yourself out of the game.
8. Power Down
“Power Down” could be taken any number of ways. It feels like a double meaning. The power could be down in the house, and the lights are off. But also personally, maybe you’ve become disempowered somehow from the context of what you once were in the relationship, or at least in that moment. This song moves about as far to the left as anything on the album. It’s important to have gone there to a point. I wanted to make a pop album, but I also wanted to make stops along the way with songs that resemble art more than pop. “Power Down” is probably about as successful an offering on the album as you can get, in that way.
9. Santa Rosa
This song is based on a true story about a family potentially being uprooted without fully considering the impact it would have on their lives. It might sound like a great idea to move to a horse farm and live far away from Los Angeles, but the reality might not be quite as idyllic.
10. Dancing
What you hear at the beginning of the song is a guitar with a lot of effects on it. In life, you find yourself waiting around for things to happen. What are we doing in the meantime? Well, we’re just here dancing. We’re waiting and hoping that things are going to change. In the meantime, we have no control over what’s going on at all. It’s sort of a mourning and an acceptance of something at the same time, I think.
