Under the Skin
Since his solo flight from Fleetwood Mac, Lindsay Buckingham has earned the kind of artistic acclaim for his sparse solo work that many peers have tried to achieve over the course of a lifetime.Under the Skin, stripped down to a mostly acoustic base with ethereal vocals and subtle affects, surfaces as if from a deeper soulful realm that is both magically fleeting and somehow permanent. It's a deceptively simple album with its acoustic guitars zinging South American flourishes here, semi-classical guitar figures there, and country-like riffs. Both "Show You How " and "Down on Rodeo"  beg to be adapted to the full rock-pop sound he and his former bandmates created. Buckingham's tempered vocals sound mysterious throughout, given the ambient production scrim he drops over the record's 11 tracks, including a remake of the Stones' "I'm Waiting" and "It Was You," with its suggestive Caribbean flavor and soft, industrial-percussive edge. Strange, alluring, and disarming, it's as if Buckingham can offer only passing personal glimpses into his own life and psyche as a father, husband, lover, iconic pop star, and California songwriter dabbling in but never anchoring himself in one place for too long. This pleasing shadowplay at times borders slightly on the self-conscious, but generally, with the quality of such lovely self-confessional songs like "Cast Away Dreams," Buckingham leaves us willing to follow him any place, wanting more. --Martin Keller