ALBUM REVIEW: Solo Anthology: The Best of Lindsey Buckingham

ONE of the best films of all time — the National Lampoon's Vacation — opens with Holiday Road, and hearing the opening chords takes me back to my childhood watching Clark Griswold in action.

This triple anthology has a familiarity about it, too, because Lindsey Buckingham was one of the driving forces behind Fleetwood Mac's biggest hits.

Sleeping around the Corner, a collaboration with Christine McVie, is the only time a Mac band member appears on the album. 

Buckingham was recently sacked from the Mac tour machine because apparently, he was told: “Stevie (Nicks, Fleetwood Mac singer) never wants to be on a stage with you again.”

The tracks are hand-picked from over 30 years’ worth of non-Fleetwood Mac work, six studio and three live albums.

Tracks like Don’t Look Down, Surrender Rain and Rock Away Blind show off Buckingham’s finger-picking guitar skills. 

The whole Anthology sounds overproduced, but I guess that’s what you get when you don’t have the constraints of other band members.

The live tracks prove that Buckingham is a great performer, but even those are a bit too polished.

While there are some corkers there is a lot of oversentimental dross.

Maybe just a handful of the 53 tracks would have made it a bit more bearable. 

This would, however, make the perfect stocking filler for the Mac fan father who likes shouting at his shiny voiced-control system “Alexa: play Holiday Road” for the umpteenth time.