Figured it out, right? After days of needless deliberation over this week’s #superfriendssunday theme — select an album turning 50 in 2023 — it occurred to me the simplest solution would be to spotlight Penguin, the first of two Fleetwood Mac LPs from ‘73, seen here with an equally flightless metronome and a Funko Pop of Chilly Willy.
In so doing, I avoid resurfacing from my deep dive into Christine McVie’s ceiling-shattering career. Kill two birds with … er, no, that doesn’t seem very nice. Even if I do want to lop off parts of this puffin cousin.
Despite becoming their best-selling effort in the US up to that point, this March ‘73 release is uneven and reducible to an EP. As with FM’s preceding pair — perhaps packaged more efficiently as Future Bare Games in Trees? — the strongest stuff from Mac’s 7th might have better bolstered their 8th, Mystery to Me, later in the year.
Penguin is still an album of firsts, however, most obviously as the initial material cut after the dismissal of Danny Kirwan.
His replacements proved problematic: subtler lead guitarist Bob Weston suited their still-mellowing sound quite well, but the plain holler of Savoy Brown’s Dave Walker never really fit at all. He gets two tracks: the run-of-the-mill ‘Harvest’ rock of ‘The Derelict’ and an equally ordinary take on Junior Walker’s hit ‘(I’m a) Road Runner.’ Both stick out sorely, detracting from forward strides McVie and Bob Welch make elsewhere.
Christine shines brightest by far; her three tunes, the most on a Mac set thus far, are what save this bird from sinking.
‘Remember Me,’ her first Side 1 opener, breezes from zero to sunshine in an instant via that rapidly emerging McVie manner she will take to greater heights on ‘Say You Love Me’ and ‘You Make Loving Fun.’ Here, and on the winning ‘Dissatisfied’ (as in: ‘you make me feel …’), Christine slyly wraps confessional heartache within soothing ear candy encrusted in soulfully conveyed hooks.
Once she starts asking ‘Did You Ever Love Me’ amid a panoply of steel drums I could do without, you can clearly see plenty of fractures in Ms. Perfect’s marriage to John McVie long before they come to the fore on Rumours.