Fleetwood Mac is back in the studio – it must be the end times after all! Sadly, they’re back in the studio as a quartet, minus the divinely classy Christine McVie, and it’s just not the same.
One of my biggest frustrations with Say You Will concerns a saddening realization about my favorite musician in the whole band. Well, maybe realization isn’t the word for it – to a certain extent, now that I look back at it, I was complaining about some lack of originality with Lindsey Buckingham’s last solo effort, and sadly, that’s also my chief complaint here. His guitar work is so similar from song to song that it’s unnerving to listen to the whole album in one sitting. I shouldn’t be liking the Stevie Nicks tunes better than Buckingham’s, as I quite honestly tend to skip her entries in the Fleetwood Mac catalogue. But Buckingham seems to be writing the same few songs over and over here, I look forward to Nicks’ tunes as a breath of fresh air on Say You Will. The guitar-heavy album also makes me realize that perhaps Fleetwood Mac lost more when Christine McVie left than they did when Buckingham left previously. It really hits me here how much her voice, her keyboards and songwriting style balanced things out. Parts of Say You Will come across as an uninspired, unfinished Buckingham solo effort in a lot of places.
Highlights include the Buckingham/Nicks two-hander “Peacekeeper” (already getting a bit too much saturation exposure on radio), Nicks’ “Illume” (which bears the simple subtitle of “9/11”), and Buckingham’s 
best track this time around, “Miranda”. “Silver Girl”, “Thrown Down” and the title track are also worth a listen.
An interesting conceit, this Fleetwood Mac reunion in the studio, but sadly I’m just not sure it worked. I’ll admit that it’s grown on me since the first listen, and it may continue to do so, but almost a month of listening to it hasn’t quite sold me on the merits.
- What’s The World Coming To (4:07)
- Murrow Turning Over In His Grave (4:13)
- Illume (9/11) (4:14)
- Thrown Down (4:29)
- Miranda (4:17)
- Red Rover (3:25)
- Say You Will (3:57)
- Peacekeeper (5:02)
- Come (5:28)
- Smile At You (3:13)
- Running Through The Garden (3:53)
- Silver Girl (3:21)
- Steal Your Heart Away (3:53)
- Bleed To Love Her (3:57)
- Everybody Finds Out (3:53)
- Destiny Rules (3:53)
- Say Goodbye (3:28)
- Goodbye Baby (3:50)
Released by: Warner Bros.
Release date: 2003
Total running time: 62:11
