The kindest thing that can be said about this, an album about which kind things have rarely been uttered, is that it isn’t entirely rubbish. Because I’m a masochist, I’m on my fourth listen of Time as I write — and at least the first three tunes have sunk in enough that I now can hum along to a discernible hook.
That’s hardly an endorsement; as I’d feared, the whole is every bit as bland and uninspired as its cover. But when a clunker’s reputation warns off curious ears as groaningly as this 16th Fleetwood Mac set has — it was voted the 10th worst disc ever for an ancillary in the third edition of Colin Larkin’s All Time Top 1000 Albums — it’s genuinely surprising to come across any songs I’d willingly replay.
That’s true of ‘Talkin’ to My Heart,’ Billy Burnette’s catchy-enough leadoff rocker, written between stints as Lindsey Buckingham’s replacement in this ever-shifting outfit. His almost-sexy strutter ‘I Got It in for You’ could suck a lot harder too.
There’s far more reason to return to Christine McVie’s first two (of five) tunes, especially an overlooked gem — her fatigued farewell to ‘Hollywood (Some Other Kind of Town)’ — that’s not only irresistibly chipper but seemingly more infused by personal traits than most of her songbook. ‘I don’t care for sunny weather,’ she sings over a lush bed of cooing harmonies. ‘I like the change of seasons better.’
Sadly, it’s all downhill from there, for both McVie and her cohorts — and we’ve only reached Track 3, ‘Blow by Blow, ‘ the first of two contributions from Traffic legend Dave Mason.
‘Blow by Blow,’ refashioned from a World Cup USA ’94 compilation and bolstered by hearty backing vocals, is tolerable as a solid knockoff of Robert Plant’s sound from a decade earlier. But Mason’s other number, ‘I Wonder Why,’ is generic and lyrically facile (the whole album is, actually), unsalvageable even by the mighty pipes of Stevie Nicks replacement Bekka Bramlett, daughter of ‘70s mainstays Delaney & Bonnie.
McVie’s moments deteriorate less glaringly, yet still inarguably.
‘I Do’ is half-good; McVie’s knack for potentially Hallmark banal choruses that somehow subtly tug at heartstrings instead is completely intact. The rest of the song is what feels unformed, a lack of refinement and inspiration that becomes distracting on ‘Sooner or Later’ and unbearable once ‘Nights in Estoril’ (rhymes with ‘oh the never-ending thrill’) gets underway.
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The mawkish ‘All Over Again’ falls somewhere amid this narrow muck of quality. Like its brethren, the lullaby is lifted by another buoyant chorus, one I bet Neil Finn admired, leading to the song’s inclusion during shows on Fleetwood Mac’s 2018 tour, for which Finn and Mike Campbell (of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers) served as Buckingham fill-ins.
Yet even McVie’s weakest moments on Time — still more listening to go but ‘Nights in Estoril’ may hold up as her worst ever — are all a far cry better than the seven-minute tone poem (‘These Strange Times’) that Mick Fleetwood insisted on including as closer.
The others didn’t dig it, and McVie had essentially quit the band by that point in the recording, clashing repeatedly with Mason and refusing to tour. So Fleetwood recorded the piece himself with assists from Bramlett (who later booted via fax) and Duran Duran producer John Jones. Ostensibly a tribute to founding Mac member Peter Green, the thing is such portentous gobbledygook I’m astonished Mick could deliver it with a straight face.
It is, however, a fitting conclusion to what might have been a nadir end to the Fleetwood Mac saga. ‘This was the one time I should not have soldiered on,’ he admitted in his 2014 autobiography. Thankfully, gale-force winds of new life would very soon deeply fill the quintessential lineup’s lungs.
[Unavailable on vinyl. CD photo cribbed from Discogs.]