New York Times Review of Christine Solo Concert
Penguin

New York Times (NY), May 17, 1984

Section: C
ROCK: CHRISTINE MCVIE SINGS

Stephen Holden

WITH her smoky folk -blues voice and original songs that suggest stormy emotions brewing beneath a placid surface, Christine McVie is the musical center of the British-American folk-rock group Fleetwood Mac. Miss McVie is the latest member of the group to record a solo album. Monday, the singer and keyboardist appeared at the Beacon Theater with a solidly professional band that included Todd Sharp, the guitarist with whom she has collaborated on many of her recent songs.

The concert exemplified both the pleasures and the limitations of the Southern California rock style that Fleetwood Mac represents. The music's smooth steady rhythms, hummable tunes and fluid instrumental interchanges involving various configurations of two keyboards and two guitars maintained a pleasantly luxuriant musical ambiance.

Singing Fleetwood Mac songs as well as her solo album material, the singer projected an appealing sweetness, but her placidity ultimately worked against her. Where Fleetwood Mac's individual quirks have given the group's music a satisfying stylistic diversity, Miss McVie embraced only one idiom - the midtempo folk-rock ballad - without offering any significant change in mood.

Date: 1984-05-17         Number of views: 758

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