Pass the jazz salts...

Fleetwood Mac - Tusk (1979) - Warner Bros.

Holy crap!  I'm not sure what just happened!  After listening to this double-album I feel like I've been on a 3 day speed binge... my hands are shaking, my eyes are bloodshot, there's half naked bodies all over my living room floor and my kitchen is absolutely spotless!

This is the album where you realize the 70's have really gone too far. 

After the hugely successful (and amazing) Rumours, Tusk is like being hungover while listening to a coked-up friend talk about his recent break-up: its tense, indulgent, rambling and largely incoherent.       

The album opens with the relatively sane-sounding, Christine McVie tune, "Over & Over".   I think to myself, "Alright cool, let's dim the lights and open that bottle of wine, its gonna be a relaxing evening!"  

WRONG! Its right after this that the train speeds off the tracks with Lindsey Buckingham's "The Ledge".  With its spazzy vocals, guitar line and drum beats I begin to feel panicked.  Should I lock the door?  Turn off the lights? Who's in here with me?  Its not until Stevie Nick's "Sara" that I can even sit down again.  

The calm doesn't last long when Side Two opens with the crazed-sounding, "What Makes You Think You're the One?" and I begin to empathize with the dog on the album cover who's growling & angrily pulling at someone's pant leg! 

Just about every song is steeped in paranoia, loneliness, jealousy and general unhappiness.   For an hour and fifteen minutes, the listener is invited into this world of over-indulgence and heartache that never really lets up!  Its quite a ride!

Everything comes to a head on the albums penultimate track, "Tusk".      

With a driving beat, marching band, buried vocals and ultra-paranoid lyrics, "Tusk" is the sound of a heart-exploding at a high school pep rally!  Somehow, at this point, it all comes together and makes sense. The party's over kids!    

The album concludes with the McVie song, the short & sweet,  "Never Forget" with the repeated line "Oooh ooh we will never forget tonight!"  You can say that again!  As the needle lifts off the record and the cracks of dawn shine through the curtains, I notice the time and wonder if I should try to get some sleep or stay up and listen to one more record?  


RATING: 4 out of possible 5 weeks in rehab